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Chapter One

Conditions forAthenian Democracy

JOSIAH OBER

D emocracy, as a word, concept, and set or practices, was invented inthe ancient city-state (polis) ofAthens. By democracy (demokratia)

the Athenians meant active political rule by the demos-the native adultmales. This political body was constituted for purposes ofgovernmentaland legal decision making withour regard for extraneous socioeconomicdistinctions; there was no property qualification for voting rights. Democ­racy flourished at Athens from 508-322 B.C., with only two brief inter­ruptions in the late fifth century. After 322 B.C., periods in which theAthenians ruled themselves democratically were interspersed with peri­ods of foreign-imposed oligarchy, but democracy remained an impor­tant part of the Athenian (and wider Greek) political landscape well intothe era of Roman domination. 1

This relatively long political history is strikingly different from thatof every subsequent democratic state in at least one salient respect: Thedemocratic Athenians had no historical model ofdemocracy from whichthey might hope to learn. Whereas Athens' experience with democracybecame an important model (or, more often, an anti-model) for virtu­ally all later thinking about the potential benefits and pitfalls of repub­lican forms of government, there was no road map for the Athenians'own audacious political experiment. They quite literally invented democ­racy as they went along.

The Athenians were, of course, innocent of any teleological con­ception regarding the "conditions of political maturity" or "goal state"that a democratic form of government should or even might entail.Moreover, in the early days of the democracy, the Athenians had noclear expectations about the relationship between the form of political

Conditions for Athenian Democracy 3

organization they had adopted and potential extra-political "sideeffects": They had no prior idea of what a democratic economy mightlook like, no conception ofhow a democratic citizen might be expectedto behave, no notion of either "democratic peace" or the effect ofdemocracy on national capacity to wage war; in brier, they had nopre-Platonic sense of the nature of the "democratic soul." It was notuntil the mid-fifth and fourth centuries that Athenian political oratorsand Athenian critics of democracy sought to analyze what democracymeant for national and individual character, social behavior, economy,and war.

In thinking about the Athenian experience with democracy, it isimportant to keep this historical tabula rasa in mind. The intellectualexercisl: rl:prCsclltl:<.! by this VOlllll1l: was lInavailabk, t:vt:J1 covt:rtly, LO

the Athenians for much of their history as a democracy. Indeed, thethinking that led to this volume was (ultimately) made possible by theAthenian experience. Greek historical priority does not, however,mean that the Athenian political expcril:nce was so qualitatively dir­ferent from that of subsequent democracies as to obviate the valueof comparisons; it was, after all, Athenian political writers who firstattempted to analyze the conditions for democracy. Pseudo-Xenophon(the "Old Oligarch"), Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, and Demosthenes(to name only the best known) all wrote searching analyses of the socialconsequences ofdemocratic government. But among Athenian writersit is Aristotle, in the Politics (especially Book 6) who most explicitlyposes the question that animates this collection: What precisely are theconditions that promote, sustain, and threaten democracy as a form ofgovernment?

Aristotle asked similar questions about oligarchy and tyranny, theother two canonical "real world" regime-types familiar to him from thehistorical experience of the Greek city-states. But, like the majority ofmajor Greek political writers of the classical period, Aristotle lived mostof his adult life in democratic Athens. Aristotle regarded democracy asqualitatively inferior to three ideal-world "correct" regimes (polity, aris­tocracy, and monarchy). But he regarded democracy as the best (i.e., mostcapable of approximating conditions of justice) of the three commonlyexisting real-world political governmental alternatives (democracy, oli­garchy, and tyranny) ordinarily available to his fellowpolis-dwelling Greeks.And so, like many of his Greek contemporaries who wrote what we nowthink of as political theory, Aristotle was especially interested in the con­ditions associated with democratic flourishing. 2

The general problem of specifying the conditions under whichdemocracy arises, flourishes, collapses, and is reborn was among the

4 Josiah Ober

central concerns of Greek political philosophy from the mid-fifth cen­tury B.C. onward.3 And, at least in part because of the profound influ­ence of Greek political thought, the "democracy problem" remained acentral concern for many later Western political thinkers-even throughthe long historical era (roughly the third through the seventeenth cen­turies C.E.), in which there was no living example of democracy as thegovernment ofa complex independent state to which empirically mindedpolitical theorists might refer. 4 Once again, it is important to keepin mind that "thinking abstractly about the conditions of democraticflourishing" was only possible after Athens had become a democracy.Whereas Aristotle, Cicero, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, Paine, Madi­son, Jefferson, and others each had the history of democratic Athens (orat least historical and philosophical traditions about Athens) to thinkwith, in the beginning the Athenians had only themselves and their ownlived experience.

Because he asked questions so similar to those posed by the editorsof this collection, Aristotle's analysis of democracy in the Politics offersa useful starting point for thinking about the conditions that promotedand threatened Athenian democracy. First, although he (famously) failedto develop anything directly comparable to a modern analytic model ofthe economy, Aristotle does associate democracy directly with relationsbetween clearly defined economic classes: For Aristotle, democracy wasformally defined as the rule (in apolis) of the fraction of the total "poten­tial citizen" (j.e., native, adult, male: hereafter NAM) population thatwas "poor."5 And thus democracy, for Aristotle, was best understood asthe self-conscious political dominance of men who were constrained towork for their living. The fact that most NAMs in any given polis werelikely to be "poor" by Aristotle's (conventionally aristocratic) standardmeans that democracies were in practice ruled by the "many" (the clearmajority ofNAMs) rather than by the "few"-that subset ofNAMs whowere leisure-class. But Aristotle insists that this empirical demographicphenomenon (many poor/few leisured) is strictly irrelevant to the for­mal definition of democracy: The key to democracy was that it was gov­ernment in the interest of the poor; the fact that it was therefore also inthe interest of the majority was epiphenomenal for Aristotelian politicalanalysis.

If democracy is defined as "the rule of the poor," we might expectAristotle to suggest that democracy will flourish whenever the materialinterests of the "poor" are clearly recognized by the "many" qua rulingfaction, and maximized accordingly. But he certainly does not think thisto be the case: Democracy does indeed, in Aristotle's thinking, depend

Conditions for Athenian Democracy

on the constitutional dissociation of political participation rights fromproperty ownership, and thus on the political domination of citizenswith relatively little property. But if"the poor" were actually to use theirpolitical power to maximize their own material interests (by seizing andredistributing the goods of the rich), this would constitute a conditionof fundamental injustice.

In Aristotle's thinking, the systematic practice of injustice is notonly morally wrong, it is also destructive of established order. Injusticedestabilizes the entire society and eventually leads to class-based civilwarfare. In the Politics, justice is defined as "the common good" (to teikoinei sumpheron). This does not imply a utilitarian ideal of "the great­est good for the greatest number" but a distributive ideal of "to eachaccording to his desert."6 The redistribution of material goods by theruling faction is unjust because it is an example of one empowered seg­ment (meros) of the society using its political authority to further its fac­tional ends by seizing from others that which they deserve, and therebydamaging the good of the s,ociety as a whole. The correct approach tosecuring the long-term stability of a democratic regime, accordingto Aristotle, is to devise judicial and political remedies for moderatingthe tendency of the empowered many to engage in excessive (material)self-aggrandizement, thereby preventing the interests of rich minorityand poor majority from diverging too radically.? To facilitate this de­sirable outcome, he offers various practical suggestions, at the level ofinstitutional innovation or modification, for encouraging or discour­aging particular classes of citizens from active political participation(Politics, Book 6).

Ifwe do not worry ourselves too much about the details ofAristotle'splan for "moderating" democracy,8 there is much to be said for thefundamentals of Aristotle's analysis of the conditions conducive to thelong-term functional success of Greek (and particularly, Athenian)democracy. In terms ofprior Greek history, the most radical innovationof the Athenian democracy was that it made participating citizens ofgenuinely poor NAMs. This meant that the citizenship included notonly the 35 to 45 percent (or so) ofNAMs who were economically "mid­dling men" (metrioi)-sub-Ieisure-class yeoman farmers and other propertyowners who worked for themselves. It also included the 50 to 60 percentofNAMs who were constrained to work (full or part time) for someoneelse, and whose lack of property precluded their military participation inthe ranks ofthe heavy infantry (hoplites). By making men who were so veryunequal to one another in economic and social terms into political equals(the vote of the day laborer now equal to that of the hnded aristocrat),

5

6 Josiah Ober

Athenian democracy introduced a new socioeconomic factor into thepolitical equation.

The "naturalness" of the condition in which society's politicalrulers are also those persons whose ancestors had traditionally monop­olized social and economic forms of power was put in doubt atthe moment of democracy's inauguration. The ancient Greek aristo­cratic ideal, in highly schematic terms (which I will seek to nuancesomewhat), was one in which society was neatly divided into twocamps. On the one side stood the kaloskagathos. He was clearly distin­guished by his noble antecedents; by his considerable wealth, correctlyacquired (i.e., mostly inherited) and correctly invested (especially inagricultural land); by his bearing, gait, and the physical beauty of histanned athlete's body; and by his ample leisure to participate in con­tests with his peers. These contests ranged from warfare to athleticgames to drinking games at elite symposia. He was distinguished, finallyand definitively, by his capacity to engage in political rule along withthis fellow kaloikagathoi, and to compete with them for high officeand honors.

On the other side of the aristocrat's binary social universe stood theponeros: He was"nobody, son ofnobody"; he possessed no ancestral storeof prestige or wealth; he worked at a trade, did day labor, or engaged insordid retail exchanges. He was effectively the slave of those who boughthis wares or paid his wages. His body was ugly: bent from labor and oftenpale from work indoors (here, the untanned shoemaker provides the par­adigm). The poneros lacked the leisure to improve his body via gymnas­tics, or his mind via poetry and music. His soul systematically corruptedby his menial existence, he had no capacity (and should have no desire)to engage in political affairs. The distinction between kaloikagathoi andponeroi was-in the schematic aristocratic view of the world-overt andself-evident at each and every point: The two human types inhabited thesame physical terrain but completely different conceptual spheres. It wassimply impossible to imagine ever making a mistake about who was who,or who deserved what. The type-scene ofthe confrontation ofkalosk 'agathosalld !J()Jll'I'O'" is provided by the Thersill's passage ill Book 2 or the Iljl/ri.in which the lowly upstart Thersites, who dares to raise his voice againsthis social and moral superiors, is soundly trounced by lord Odysseus.Homer approvingly notes that Thersites was the ugliest man on theexpedition and that Odysseus' physical abuse ofhim resulted in salutarylaughter all around. 9

With the advent of democracy, this seamless vision of unquestion­able distinction was no longer sustainable. Now the vote of"nobody, son~j:' "''''''vl,,'' h"rl nr~ciselv the same weight in deciding the outcome of a

Conditions for Athenian Democracy

debate as that of the noblest scion of the noblest house. Moreover"nobody, son of nobody" might actually choose to raise his voice inpublic-if not as a formal speaker in the citizen Assembly, then in con­cert with his fellow nobodies attending that Assembly as voting mem­bers, hooting and jeering at the distinguished men who dared to standup to speak. 10 The Thersites-type scene is thus inverted: Hurtful publicscorn and laughter is levied by the self-confident poneroi upon the upstartkalosk agathos.

After the inauguration of democracy, ifa nobleman's speech in thepublic space of the citizen Assembly was regarded by the mass of thepoor as incompatible with their own demotic convictions and aspira­tions, their collective voice might simply drown out the nobleman'sindividual voice. They might furthermore demand to hear a speakerwhose public views were more in tune with their own. Given the tra­ditional competition among aristocrats for political distinction, this"behavioral training" of public speakers eventually led (in the viewof the old elite) to a SOrt of political Gresham's Law, by which the"good public speech" ofadherents to traditional aristocratic norms wasdriven out by the "bad public speech" of "demagogues"-upstarts ofdubious background who were willing to say whatever would pleasethe mob. ll

Much of the negative evaluation ofAthenian politics offered by eliteGreek writers, from Pseudo-Xenophon and Thucydides in the fifth cen­tury B.C. through Plutarch in the second century C.E., is influenced bymore or less sophisticated versions of this general conception of "whatwent wrong" in democratic politics. While I certainly do not share thearistocratic evaluative stance of these elite writers, I think that theirgeneral description of democratic Athens, as characterized by demoticcontrol of elite public behavior and (especially) elite political speech, isaccurate and that it helps us to explain how Athenian democracy func­tioned in practice. 12

The disgust of the traditional aristocrat at the social leveling thatthe political enfranchisement of the lower orders brought in its trainis hrilliantly salirized in Tht'()phr:I.~IIIS' late {Ollflh-ccIHllry work

on Characters. Theophrastus sketches an amusing portrait of theOligarchic Man, who struts about in public dressed ostentatiously andranting against the entire "race ofdemagogues" (26.4-6). He demandsplenary powers for elected government officials. He seeks to displayhis education by citing Homer, although he actually knows only theverse praising monarchy.13 He calls for the elite to meet in private inorder to discuss political matters and asserts that they should give uppublic participation in democratic politics so as to avoid being either

7

8 Josiah Ober

insulted or honored by the democracy. He claims that he cannotgrasp why gentlemen should take any part in communal affairs inthe democratic polis-either "we" or "they" must rule, and that's allthere is to it (26.3). He disparages the ordinary people both as in­grates and as slaves to gifts and bribes. And he feels himself shamedwhen "some scrawny unwashed type" sits next to him in the Assem­

bly (26.5).Notably, Theophrastus wrote at the very end of the period of

the fully independent democracy: It is safe to say that his disgruntledkaloskagathos-who regarded democracy as a gross insult to the nat­ural order of the world, an order in which aristocrats dominated allspheres of life and lower-class poneroi stayed in their servile place­had his counterparts throughout thc earlier history of Atheniandemocracy. At least some of these intransigent would-be aristocratsnever forgot that it was the establishment of the democracy that hadfatally disrupted the "natural" order of things. And some of themwould seek to "put things right" if they thought they had a chanceto do so.

I would suggest that Athenian elites were quite right to see democ-racy and the hegemony of an aristocratic conception of the naturalsociopolitical order as mutually exclusive ideological conditions. Onthis reasoning, among the necessary preconditions for the originalemergence of the Athenian democracy was a rift in the unchallengedbelicf that aristocrats were the only potential actors on the politicalstage. And this in turn suggests that the historical scenario I havesketched, in which a political regime predicated on a fully "naturalized"aristocratic world view is immediately replaced by a self-consciousdemocracy manifesting a completely different conception of humanworth and social desert, must be an oversimplification. The transitionto full democracy would seem to demand an intermediate step inwhich the serene surface of the ideology of aristocratic naturalism isbroken. Moreover, remembering Aristotle's arguments, we can see thatdemocracy's long-term survival as a political system will necessarily bepredicated on a relatively high level of social stability, and that thisstability will depend on the practical capacity of thc dcmocratic rcgimeto establish a counterideology, one suited to aligning the perceivedinterests of a significant proportion of the "elite few" with those of the"ordinary many." It is only given this alignment of interests that therecidivist analogues ofTheophrastus' Oligarchic Man will remain mar­ginalized figures of fun rather than becoming dangerous agents ofpolitical instability.

Conditions Tor f\[llellldll UeIIH)U acy

The history ofAthenian democracy demonstrates the overall successof the effort to reconcile what might seem at first blush to be irreconcil­ably opposed social interests. With the establishment of democracy, thelower-class "many" had unexpectedly stepped onto the historical stageand asserted the startling claim that the poor man had as much right toshare in political life as his wealthy compatriot. Because that claim wasin fact made palatable to a significant portion ofAthens' social and eco­nomic elite, the Athenian democratic state was not debilitated by in­cessant class warfare. Plato (Republic 422e-23a) famously claimed thatevery existing Greek polis was in fact two poleis, one rich and one poor,locked in eternal strife. But, in practice, the Athenian democracy provedstrikingly stable over time: Aristotle states explicitly that democracyis the most moderate of the three commonly existing regime types (Pol­itics, 1289b2-5).

The conditions ofAthenian democratic flourishing centered on thepragmatic integration of elite Athenians into a political regime domi­nated by the non-elite many. That regime offered honors and positionsofleadership to elite individuals who performed their public duties at aconsistently high level while simultaneously conforming to a demoticstandard of public behavior and speech. By the same token, the demo­cratic regime humiliated and not infrequently punished would-be lead­ers if they failed in either accomplishment or public deportment.Because a workable balance was not only struck but main tained throughan effective (although informal and "ideological") apparatus of publicdiscourse, social practice, and civic education, the democracy provedhighly resilient: The Athenians twice (410 and 403 B.C.) restoreddemocracy in the face of adverse circumstances after antidemocraticconspirators briefly succeeded in establishing oligarchic regimes. 14 Butit remains to be seen how the democracy could have come into being inthe first place, in the face of the presumed dominance of the ideologyof aristocratic naturalism. We will return to that question at the end ofthis chapter.

Happily, the history of democracy at Athens is (by the standards ofpre-modern political organizations) relatively well documented by well­informed contcmporary or ncar-contcmporary historians (Herodotus,Thucydides, Xenophon, Ps-Aristotle) and documentary cvidence (espe­cially inscriptions of decrees and laws passed by the democratic govern­ment). We possess a rich corpus of speeches delivered in democraticassemblies and courtrooms, a number of tragedies and comedies stagedby the democratic state and attended by a large cross section of the citi­zenty, and contemporary political commentaries, ranging from polemical

10 Josiah Ober

tracts (Pseudo-Xenophon) to careful (if critical) philosophical analyses(Plato, Aristotle). There is also a large body of later ancient work thatbears directly on the history of Athenian democracy (notably the LivesofPlutarch), although this postclassical material must be approached with

great care.In sum, the evidence for the conditions that sustained Athenian

democracy is quite good. And recent scholarship has gone a long wayin specifying the institutional changes and social negotiations that pre­served the tenuous balance between the various competing interestsrepresented within Athenian citizen society (and among citizens andnoncitizens). Along with the relationship between mass audiencesand elite political leaders sketched here, recent scholarship has clarifiedother significant aspects of Athens' democratic society: Freedom andrespect for the dignity of the individual citizen were established ascornerstones of the democratic public order. ls Athenian law and legalpractices encouraged contestants to convert private disputes into mat­ters of public concern, thereby opening them to public scrutiny andsubjecting them to the authority of judgments rendered by public arbi­trators and mass juries. Through this process, traditional conceptionsof reciprocity and revenge were successfully incorporated into an over­arching democratic regime ofdiscipline and punishment. 16 The Athenianmilitary complex quickly adapted to include the poorest of citizens inkey military roles (notably, as rowers on war galleys) and to shift theprimary burdens (and honors) of financing military operations to thewealthiest citizens-in the process, vastly enhancing the Atheniancapacity to wage war effectively at a distance from the home territoryofAttica. I?

Non-citizens-foreign-born men, Athenian women, and evenslaves-were folded into the ambit of the democratic social and in­stitutional order. There is considerable debate among scholars overwhether that enfolding was predicated on a hypertrophy of NAMexclusivity or whether it entailed a progressive amelioration of ex­clusionary distinctions between citizens and "others." It would beabsurd to claim that all residents of Athenian tetritory were COlltelHwith their lot: Athenian slaves took advantage of the disruptions ofthe later Peloponnesian War to escape in droves (Thucydides 7.27.5).Yet, faced by the oligarchy of404 B.C., many ofAthens' resident aliensand slaves joined forces with the NAMs, risking their lives in fight­ing to restore democracy. The ambivalent relationship betweenAthenian citizens and their slaves was manifest in the function of thepublic shrine of Theseus (mythical founder of democracy) as a for­mallv accepted place of refuge for runaway slaves. In any event, the po-

Conditions for Athenian Democracy

tential of non-citizens to subvert the democratic political order re­mained latent; democratic Athens (unlike aristocratic/oligarchicSparta, discussed subsequently) never felt constrained to institutional­ize a regime of military terror aimed at suppressing local non-citizenambitions. 18

A rich array of intermediary Athenian civic and civil organizationsresponded to the democratic regime, either by alignment with egalitar­ian democratic norms or by providing private-realm spaces in whichalternative norms could be celebrated. 19 The physical space of the demo­cratic city was reconfigured to reflect the more equitable access to publicgoods characteristic of democratic thinking. 20 State-sponsored festivals,parades, public sacrifice and feasting, and dramatic performances-all ofwhich had deep roots in formerly elite-controlled religious rituals-wereall brought under democratic institutional authority and served variouslyas loci for the display of social solidarity and (in the case of drama) forsharp and salutary critical interrogations of public values. 21 New literarygenres and subgenres, from historiography to oratory to philosophicaldialogue emerged and evolved under the influence of democratic publicdiscourse.22

In brief, it is clear that classical Athenian governmental and legalinstitutions, political ideology and public speech, social practices, andhigh culture all participated actively in creating a distinctive set of val­ues and practices-at once affected by and important for the robustnessofdemocratic Athenian politics. Plato's terminology may remain strangeto us, but we can begin to see what he meant when he claimed in theRepublic that the "democratic soul" was the microcosmic individualanalogue to the socially diverse macrocosmic collectivity that was thedemocratic city. Although it may be impossible to specify the priority ofthese various "sustaining conditions," they can be described in enoughanalytic detail to make the study of democratic Athens worthwhile forcomparative purposes. 23

By contrast to the conditions sustaining democracy, the conditionsthat undermine democracy have, on the whole, concerned recent Greekhistorical scholarship kss than they did earlier generations of scholars.The, by now, shopworn notions that a growth in democratic "radical­ism" destabilized the democracy, that political leaders after Pericles aban­doned concern for the public good and treated the public sphere asnothing more than a system of private spoils, and that class tensions anda growth in selfish individualism among the populace at large under­mined civic solidarity, have been exposed as tendentious fictions by aspate of detailed work on the fourth- and third-century phases of thedemocracy.24

11

12 Josiah Ober

The twO late-fifth-century oligarchic coups d'etat (in 411 B.C.

at a time of crisis in the Peloponnesian War, and in 404 B.C. follow­ing Athens' loss of that war) certainly did reveal the depths of anti­democratic sentiment within some sectors of the Athenian elite. Butthe denouement of the first of these political counterrevolutions wasmore notable for demonstrating the depths of shared sentimentbetween the genuinely poor citizens and the "middling men" ofhoplite status, and for the unwillingness of the latter to join in a long­term alliance with extreme oligarchs. The second oligarchic inter-lude was short, brutal, and nasty, proving to most Athenians (includ- iing Plato: Seventh Letter 324d-25a; and the school of Aristotle: tAthenllion Politeia 41-42) the moral bankruptcy of the antidemo- r:cratic dite. Thus, ironically, counterrevolution pointed unerringly to

the rela~ive moral superiority and choice-worthiness of the democratic ~

alternanve. .The fact that Athens was defeated by Philip of Macedon in 338 B.C.

at Chaeronea, dnd subsequendy failed to maincain a consistenc inck­pendence vis avis Philip's successors on the Macedonian throne, is nowless commonly attributed to the Athenian democracy's internal failingsthan to the diplomatic and military skills of Macedon's leaders and totheir access to vast reserves of material and human resources. The finalend of democracy in the Greek world is not, by the same token, nowunderstood as a product ofdemocracy's inherent internal contradictions,but as a long-term result of the general preference of powerful imperialentities (Macedonian and especially Roman) for dealing with oligarchies:for small bodies of easily controlled elites over unruly and independent­minded democratic multitudes.

The remainder of this essay returns to a previously raised question:What conditions were necessary for the original emergence ofAtheniandemocracy? I have suggested that a key prior condition was the distur­bance in the uncontested sway of an integrated aristocratic ideologythat saw political rule, social relations, and human corporeal appear­ance as homologous aspects of an unquestionable natural order. Exhypothesi, that disturbance must have occurred some time before thedemocracy was established. There are various contending dates for the"origins of democracy" at Athens, but it seems that by far the best can­didate is 508 B.C. 25 That year saw the demotic uprising of the Athenianrevolution and the sweeping governmental reforms subsequently inau­gurated by Cleisthenes. And so we should seek a lapse in aristocraticideological hegemony some time in the "archaic" period, the age before508 B.C.

Conditions for Athenian Democracy

Regrettably, the (predemocratic) archaic period ofAthenian history(and Greek history generally) is poorly documented in comparison withthe classical (democratic) era of the fifth and fourth centuries. And thusany analysis of the conditions attending democracy's origins will neces­sarily be provisional, and established only at a high order of generality.That said, the answer to the chicken/egg problem of whether democ­racy was a necessary precondition to challenging aristocratic ideologi­cal hegemony or a product of that challenge may lie in rejecting theimplicit premise of the argument, by abandoning the notion that thereever was a Greek historical era in which the "naturalistic" and binaryaristocratic ideal reigned completely uncontested. If the aristocraticideal was always contestable and was periodically concested, then thequestion of democratic origins changes somewhat alld I>ecomc.:s ratherless mechanistic. Rather than asking "What predemocratic event dis­turbed the previously unflawed ideological surface and thereby pre­cipitated democracy?" we may now ask, "Why did the contestation ofbinary aristocratic ideals wke the specifically 'clc.:lllocratic' f<>rrn ofcoullt­ing allNAMs as participatory citizens in 508 in Athens, and not beforeor elsewhere?"

The relevant history begins at least as early as the eighth century B.C.,

with the explosive cultural, social, and economic changes that ended thelong Dark Age (ca. 1200-750 B.C.). The Greek world in the eighth cen­tutywitnessed the inauguration ofalphabetic literacy, a relatively steep risein population, a wave of colonization that established new Greek citiesthrough much of the Mediterranean and Black Sea coastal zones, and dra­matic changes in art, architecture, and burial practice. The wide-rangingchanges of the eighth century presumably threatened whatever structuresof aristocratic authority had developed after the collapse of Mycenaeancivilization around 1200 B.C. But because the Dark Age was an illiterateperiod, only mute archaeological evidence and the social memory preservedby Homeric poetry are available for specifying the extent and nature ofDark Age aristocratic authority. The evidence is far from transparent burpoints to a hierarchical society centered around aristocratic big men whocontrolled the distribution of goods and honors, including the right offormal buria1.26

In a series of publications, Ian Morris has demonstrated that inthe eighth century the number of graves in Athenian cemeteries far out­stripped the rise in population. He has persuasively argued that Athenianburial patterns in the eighth and sevench centuries reveal a seesaw­ing social conflict over the right to "formal burial": The initial eighth­century opening up ofburial rights to a wider cross seCtion ofAthenian

13

14 Josiah Ober

society was followed by a seventh-centuty return to restrictions on burial.Morris suggests that formal burial implied full inclusion in the society(i.e., the social rank that would eventually be equated with citizenship).Morris has recently suggested that the ideological struggle over mem­bership in society that he detects in the material record can also betraced in archaic (seventh- and sixth-century) Greek lyric poetry, aliterature written by and for elite audiences. On the one side in thisintra-elite conflict stood those aristocrats who sought to establish forthemselves a monopoly of social and political capital by the display andconspicuous consumption of luxury goods (especially those importedfrom the high civilizations of the East). The proponents of this "habro­sune ideology" emphasized interregional ties between the elite membersof a cosmopolitan stratum of Greek and nearby non-Greek societies.On the other side were those elite Creeks who favored stTongly local(intra-po/ijo) tit:s that extendt:d flirly dt:ep into the "middling ranks" ofthe local polis population; this "metrios ideology" disdained ostentation,embracing a system of values and behavior centered on restraint, mili­tary discipline, and similarity among members ofa relatively broad crosssection of local property-holding society. Morris suggests that thismetrios ideology had gained ascendance throughout much of the Greekworld by the sixth century and provided the preconditions for the estab­lishment of a variety of types of republican (broad-based oligarchic)governments. 27

At Athens, t1)e victory of something like Morris' metrios ideal was }marked by the reforms inaugurated by Solon, who was appointed tchief magistrate (archon) with special powers of arbitration during a 'period of social crisis in 594 B.C. Among the noteworthy reforms asso­ciated with Solon was the abolition of intra-polis debt bondage; Soloneffectively created the status of citizen at Athens by his retroactivelaw forbidding any Athenian to enslave another. Citizenship wasthus established as an immunity from coercive forced labor: freedomfrom being enslaved within one's own homeland. Although Solon waslater celebrated as the original father of Athenian democracy, he cer­tainly intended the Athenian elite to retain the balance of powerin Atht:nian society. Solon's liberation of the poort:st Athenians fromthe risk of slavery was a precondition to the demotic agency impli­cit in democracy, but he certainly did not intend to eliminate theprimary importance of wealth-status within the body politic. Quiteto the contrary, Solon established formal census classes, assigningdifferential political rights to Athenians corresponding to each indi­vidual's annual income (as measured in agricultural produce or itsequivalent).2M

Conditions for Athenian Democracy

The Solonian reforms left lower-class Athenians with only minimalaccess to the institutiol)s of political power. But whatever clarity therenascent seventh-century Athenian exclusivist aristocracy had been ableto establish in terms of the binary distinction between a distinguishedfew and an ordinary crowd of undistinguished "many" was blurred bySolon's reforms. In the space between the kaloik'agathoi and the poneroi,Solon interposed a relatively large body of metrioi: "middling and mod­erate" men who owned enough land to qualify for service as heavilyarmed infantrymen. By 490 B.C. (the battle of Marathon), there wereabout 9,000 Athenian hopJites, probably amounting to a third of theNAM population.

While some aristocratic Athenians who clove to the habrosuneideology might regard the middle-rank hoplite as nothing more thana jJOllcros, elitt: Adlcnialls who embraced the nlrtrioJ itkology weret:vidt:lltly willing to accept the men ohhe middle as sharers in the pub­lic realm. Solon perhaps hoped that Athens would develop into arepublican government based on a relatively moderate (i.e., broad­based, low property qualification) oligarchy of the sort that flourishedelsewhere in the late-archaic Greek world. Among the republicanalternatives imaginatively open to Athenians in the post-Solonian erawas archaic Sparta, where the hoplite warriors constituted of them­selves a closed body of citizen "Similars," defined by their commit­ment to a regime of strict discipline, military education, and socialCOntrol. That regime denied the existence of meaningful distinctionsbetween members of the in-group of Similars, while subjecting theresidents of Spartan-controlled territory outside that elite group tointentionally degrading forms of servitude and systematic militaryterrorism. 29

But in the event, Athens developed quite differently from otherGreek republics and very differently from Sparta. The Solonian legis­lation on slavery established (or at least signaled) as illegitimate theabsolute subordination of lower class native Athenians, and thusgave no support to the growth of an exclusionary Sparta-like solidar­ity among "middling" Athenians. In the decades after Solon, and es­pecially after the successful coup tl'~tat of the lyram j>isistraeus(546 B.C.), new festivals and new legal institutions were inauguratedthat served to emphasize the conceptual unity of the entire nativepopulation of Attica, a unity that further blurred the lines betweenkaloik'agathoi, metrioi, and poneroi. The tyrants (Pisistratus, and laterhis sons) sought to emphasize the connection ofAthenians of all socialclasses with Athena as patron goddess, with Athens as a socioculturalentity, and with themselves as goddess-favored patrons of the city.

1~

16 Josiah Ober

They were also, at first, careful to accommodate the ambitions of keymembers of the traditional aristocracy. After one of Pisistratus' sonswas assassinated (the killing motivated, as Thucydides points out, byindividuals seeking vengeance for a private slight), however, the tyran­nical regime became more oppressive and lost its broad base of sup­port. Without support from the local infantrymen and dependent onhired mercenary cavalry, the tyranny proved vulnerable. A Spartanexpeditionary force invaded Attica and expelled the surviving tyrantin 510 B.C.

The collapse of tyrannical authority opened a confused politicalfield of play. The two preconditions of relatively open "republican"social relations and a political ideology that we may (retrospectively)see as enabling the emergence of democracy were in place by the latesixth century 1I.c:. But f;lirly similar conditions pertained elsewhere inGreece. The tlctual move from broad-based oligarchy co tkmocracycannot be explained without resort to historical contingency. Athenianhistory before 508 B.C. had presented various distinctive features:Athens controlled a very large territory for a city-state and supporteda large population; Solon was a particularly astute lawgiver; and tyrannyat Athens emerged later than elsewhere in mainland Greece and wasaccompanied by a thriving trade in painted pottery and a nascentsilver-mining industry. But the basic pattern of territorial consolida­tion under aristocr:uic leadership, civil strife, lawgivers. and tyrants wasnot atypical for an archaic Greek polis. As the historian Herodotuspoints out (5.78), before the democratic revolution, Athens had notbeen a particularly notable polis or an important player on the widerGreek scene.

After the events of 508 and the establishment of the new democ­racy, Athens diverged quickly from the Greek norm. Athens movedrapidly to prominence in inter-polis affairs by crushing regional rivals,building a huge navy, providing key leadership in the Persian wars,and then creating the first true Aegean empire. By the middle of thefifth century, Athens was the preeminent center of Aegean trade andculture.

The full articulation of democratic governmental and legal insti­tutions was obviously not accomplished in a moment; those institu­tions continued to develop throughout the fifth century. But it is,I believe, more correct to see Athenian flourishing as resulting from theoriginal establishment of democracy than it is to regard democraticinstitutions as incidental by-products ofAthens' imperial growth. Theinauguration of the democracy meant a dramatic increase in the

Conditions for Athenian Democracy

human resources available to the state. The potential military popu­lation doubled from roughly half to the entire NAM population,enabling the explosive emergence of Athens as a naval power. More­over,' it was no longer necessary for the enfranchised NAM populationto waste its energy seeking to control the ambitions of "unenfranchisedNAMs," since the latter category literally disappeared. 30 Finally, theincorporation into the political body of those who necessarily workedfor others contributed to the atrophy of traditional aristocratic con­straints on individual economic activity. As recent scholarship hasemphasized, the Athenian economy of the late fifth and fourth cen­turies manifests strikingly "modern" features. And these must beattributed, in some measure, to the emergence of frankly democraticsocial values.3' In brief, 508 and its immediate aftermath was a water­shed in Athenian and, indeed, in Creek hisrory. Athens became :l

great state upon bccoming a dcmocracy. So what was lhc SC(!lIC1H.;C

of events that precipitated the unpredictable and decisive politicalchange?

The Athenian political stage in the years immediately following theexpulsion of the tyrant in 510 H.C. was dominated by two ambi tiousaristocrats, Isagoras and Cleisthenes. Although the state ofour evidencedoes not allow us to align these men or their supporters neatly along ahabrosunelmetrios axis, Isagoras clearly advocated a more exclusionaryapproach to elite rule, yet he found enough support among the "mid­dling men" to win the archonship for the year 508. Whether out ofprinciple or desperation, Cleisthenes turned to the remainder of theNAM population, "making the demos [i.e., the poneroi] his comrades"(Herodotus 5.66.2). In response, Isagoras called in military supportfrom Sparta. He then exiled Cleisthenes and the more prominent ofhissupporters. Isagoras also sought to dissolve Athens' ruling council,intending to replace the sitting councilors with 300 of his own sup­porters. Unexpectedly, the councilmen resisted and the demos ofAthensrose up in arms, quickly besieging Isagoras and his Spartan allies on theAcropolis. The Spartans surrendered; Isagoras was expelled from thecity. Cleisthenes was then recalled to Athens and inaugurated the reformsthat established the institutional basis of democratic government. Ayear later the decisive Athenian military victory over an alliance of sev­eral regional rivals marked the beginning of Athens' ascent to Aegean­wide prominence.

The import of my brief recapitulation of the events of 508 is this:Although the establishment of "republican/moderate-oligarchic" socialand ideological conditions in the archaic period was a prerequisite for

17

18 Josiah Ober

the establishment of democracy at Athens, democracy only came inrobeing with the sudden eruption onto the historical stage of the demos­the undifferentiated body ofNAMs. It is only when the demos, ratherthan "the aristocrats" or "the metrioi," became an actor in its own right(at the Acropolis siege) that democracy was born. Cleisthenes' institu­tional reforms did not create democracy; they gave sustainable substancero the political agency claimed by the demos in its own name, throughits own act of revolutionary violence. By that act, the demos rejected theexclusionary conception of politics that had recently been championedby Isagoras. Thc poneroi bccame participants in a common cntcrprise, aunitary regime. They joined their more privileged compatriots as citi­zcns by forcefully scizing, not by being granted, a share in the control ofAlht'lls' hit'. I.!

That Lite has continued, in some sense, down to the present day.The hisrorical conditions that yielded Athenian democracy were perhapsunique; certainly they were ro somc extent contingent and unpredic­table, bur not unrcpeatable. Once democracy was securely in place, themodel ofAthenian democracy became a factor in world political history.Because the new democratic state proved wildly successful on the inter­national scene and spectacularly productive ofliterary, artistic, and philo­sophical culture, the Athenian model was highly influential and neverforgotten. Any post-classical attempt to assert the perfect naturalness ofarisrocratic or monarchical government had to face the potentially dis­ruptive memory of democratic Athens. Concerted attempts by anti­democratic intellectuals to blacken the memory of Athens' politicalexperiment did indeed ensure that there was no attempt to apply theAthenian model directly to a post-classical regime. But ironically, thosewho sought to show "what went wrong" in Athens kept alive the con­ceptual possibility of popular government and the hope that it mightsomeday be "done right. "33

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Cohel1, D. (1995). Law. violence. lind community in classical Athens. Cambridge.Cohen, E. E. (l992). Athenian economy and society: A bankingperspective. Princeron. N].Cohen, E. E. (2000). The Athenian nation. Princeron, N].Connor, W. R. (l97l). The new politicians offifth-centuryAthens. Princeron, N].Connor. W. R. (1987). "Tribes. festivals. and processions: Civic ceremonial and polirical

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age to the Arab conquests. London.Donlan. W. (1999). The aristocratic ideal and seuctedpapers. Wauconda. IL.Dunn, J. (I 992). Democracy: The unfinishedjourney. 508 Be to AD 1993. Oxford.Eder. W. (l995). Die athenische Demokratie im 4. jahrhundert v. Chr.: Vollendung oder Verfall

einer Veifassungsform? Akten eines Symposia, August 3-7, 1992. Stuttgart.Euben, ]. P. (1990). The tmg~dy ofpoliticIII theory: 'I'he rOlld not tllken. Pri nccton, NJ.Euben, J. P. (l997). Corruptingyouth: Political education. democratic culture. andpolitical theory.

Princeton, NJ.ElIhCll . ./. P.. ]. W"lIach, ('1 al. (I 9<)/j). Atl/miflil !,olilil'lllihollghtlli/ll till' /"I'l'IJlII'll'IIl'Iioll 01'

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I:i"ky. M. I. (1')/0). "ill'i.\lod" :",,1 "",'"""j, """Iy,.i,." 1',111 I/JIII I'n""/I I !'/:.\ ).'..Ford, A. (2002). 'j'he origins o/criticiJm: Litemry "ulture andpoetic theory in cllIssiclIl G'reece.

Princeron, N].French, A. (1964). The growth olthe Athenia/l ecollomy. I,()nc!o".Goldhill, S. and It Osborne (1999). Performlllll'e culture lind Athenian demlicrtllY. Cambridge.Habichr, C. (1997). Athms;rllm Alexllnder to Antony. Cambridgc. MA.Hansen. M. H. (1991). The Athenian tkmocracy in the age ofDemosthenes: Structure, principles,

and ideology. Oxford.

Hansen, M. H. (l993). The ancient Greek city-stare: Symposium on the occl/sion ofthe250th anniversary ofthe Royal Danish Academy ofSciences and Letters. july 1-4, 1992.Copenhagen, Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Lerters: CommissionerMunksgaard.

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Humphreys, S. C. (1993). The family. womellllnd dellth: Comparative studies. Ann Arbor, MI.Johnsrone, S. (1999). Disputes and democracy: The consequences oflitigation in ancient Athens.

Ausrin, DC.Jones, N. F. (l999). The associations ofclassicalAtbens: The respollse to democral)'. New York.Kurke, L. (l999). Coins, bodies, games. andgold: The politics ofmeaning i/l arcbaic Greece.

Princeton, N].

Lord, C. and D. K. O'Connor (l991). Essays on the foundations ofAristotelian political science.Berkeley.

.\leikJe, S. (l995). Aristotle's economic thought. Oxford.

.\liller, F. D. and D. Keyt (l99l). A companion to Aristotle's Polirics. Oxford.~ lillerr, P. (1991). Lending and borrowing in ancient Athens. Cambridge.~lorgan, K. (forthcoming). Popular tyranny. Austin, TX.~lorris, I. (1987). Burial and ancient society: The rise ofthe Greek city-state. Camhridge.~l()rris, I. (1992). f)i'llfh-rill/ltlflild S1/i'il/l Jlml"llln' ill dI/.lJiollllllifl"iIY. (::""I,ri<ll'."..'lorris, I. (199<1). "The Alheni"" cco"""'y IwelllY ycar, arlcr n,e III1l'it'llt emllllmy." Cll/ssic,"

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~lorris, I. (1996). The strong principle of equaliry and rhe archaic origins of Greek democracy.In Danokratia: A con1lerslltion on dunoerllr;r.<, II/lcil'll! IIlIrI mlldem.]. Oher a"d \.. W.Hedrick. Pri"C"loJl, Nj.

.'lorris, I. (2000). Arch,uology as cllltlm" history: Wllrds l/nd things in Imn Age ('·reece.Malden, MA.

~lorris. I. and K. A. Raaflaub (l998). Democracy 2500?: Questions and challenges.Dubuque. IA.

.\fo~. C. (1962). La fin de la dbnocratie athtniemze. aspects sociaux etpolitiques du dec/in de14 citlgrecque au IVe siec/e avantJ-e. Paris.

~lo~. C. (1995). Politique et sociltl en Grece ancienne: Le "modele" athenien. Paris.

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Neils, J. (1992). Goddess and polis: The Panathenaic Festival in ancient Athens. Princeton, NJ.Nightingale, A. W. (1995). Genres in dialogue: Plato and the construct ofphilosophy.

Cambridge.Ober, J. (1989). Mass and elite in democratic Athens: Rhetoric, ideology, and the power ofthe people.

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Princcron, NJ.Ober, J. (2000). "Quasi-rights: Political boundaries and social diversity in democratic Athens."

Social Philosophy and Policy 17: 27-61.Ober, J. and C. W. Hedrick (1996). Demokratia: A conversation on democracies, ancient and

modern. Princecon, NJ.Pancel, P. S. (1992). La cit! au banquet: Histoire des repas publics dans les cites grecques. Rome.Patterson. C. (1998). The family in Greek history. Cambridge, MA.Roberrs, J. T. (1994). Alht'lls all Iri"l: Tile '1I1lidell/ocmlic mlflilioll ill W"slern Ihought.

Prilll:(.'toll, NJ.Robinson, E. W. (1997). The jirsl de/llocrades: Early popullir govern1Jlml ol/tside Athem.

Srurrf\an.Rose, P. (I ()')')). Thenril.ing Athenian impcrialism allli rhe Athcnian srarc. In COlllexlwtliziug

ebwics: l,},·ology. perf0r/l/(lI/c,·. dialogue. N. F. Thomas, M. Falkner, and David KonSlan.Lanham, MD.

Sallares, R. (1991). The ecology ofthe ancient Greek world. London.Schuller, W., W. Hoepfner, et al. (1989). Demokratie und Architektur: Del' hippodamische

Stiidtebau Imd die Elltstelltlllg der Demokratie: Komtanzer Symposion vom 17 bis 19.Juli 1987. Munich.

Starr, C. G. (1992). The aristocratic temper ofGreek civilization. New York.Thalmann, W. G. (1998). The swineherd and the bow: Representations ofclass in the Odyssey.

Imaca, NY.Todd, S. C. (1993). The shape ofAthenian law. Oxford.Too, Y. L. (1995). The rhetoric ofidentity in Isocr/ltes: Text, power, pedagogy. Cambridge.Too, Y. L. (2001). Education in Greek and Roman antiquity. Leiden.Whitehead, D. (1977). The ideology ofthe Athenian metic. Cambridge.Whidey, J. (1991). Style and society in dark age Greece: The changingface ofapre-literate society,

110D-700 B. C. Cambridge.Yunis, H. (1996). Taming democracy: Models ofpolitical rhetoric in classicalAthens. Ichaca, NY.

NOTES

1. On the origins and use of the word demokratia: Hansen 1991. Robinson 1997 collectsthe exiguous evidence for early Greek democracies ourside Athens. I remain unconvincedthat any genuine democracy was established before that of Athens. On the origins ofdemocracy in Alhens (in 50S II.C.), St'C below. Democracy at Athens afrcr }22 II.C:

Habicht 1997.2. I discuss Ariswcle on dcmocracy, and thc relationship betwcen thc ideal and commonly

existing regimes, in considerably more detail in Ober 1998, chapter 6.3. Ober 1998 :1Cf\ues this general point in detail.·1. The "dealh of dt'monacy" in the ancient world has beell pushed back by recellt scholarship

on rhe political t'xperience of the Hdknistic world, but even oprimisrs tend ro agree thaI'democracies did not survive the era of the high empire; see Ph. Gauthier, "Les cites hellenis­tiques," in Hansen 1993. For proco-democratic rhought in pre-eighteench-cencury Europe,see T. Rabb, this volume.

5. Politics 1290a40-b3; cf. 1290b 17-20. Finley 1970 remains an essemial incroduction co theproblem, although see furmer De Ste. Croix 1983, 69-81. Ober, "Aristotle's PoliticalSociology: Class, Status, and Order in the Politics," in Lord and O'Connor 1991; andMeikle 1995.

Conditions for Athenian Democracy

6. Distributive jusrice in Aristode: D. Keyt, "Ariscode's Theory of Discributive Justice," inMiller and Keyt 1991.

7. For the problem of self-aggrandizement (pleonexia) in Ariscode, and earlier Greek thought,see Balot 2001.

8. The plan ends in making moderate democracy vireually indistinguishable from light-handedoligarchy: Ober 1998,334-338.

9. Homer, Iliad, 2.232-300. On the Thersites incidem, with reeem bibliograph!" see fureherThalmann 1998. Ideals of Greek ariscocrats: Donlan 1999; Starr 1992.

10. See, e.g., Plutarch, Lift ofDemosthenes, 6.3.11. Connor 1971 offers a detailed discussion of the progressive dislocation from Athenian

democratic politics of the habits of self-display and self-legitimization associated with thetraditional nobility.

12. The relationship between elite leadership and demotic audiences in democratic Athens, andthe response of elite writers to that relationship, are the respective themes of Ober 1989 andOber 1998.

13. The reference is to Ilia". 2.204; cf. Ariswcle Polilics. 1292a 13.I~. Civic education: Ober, "The lJd,ale over Civic Educatioll ill l)emocr:uic Athells,"

in Too 2001.15. Freedom: See essays by Hansen and Wood in Ober and Hedrick 1996; Ober 2000.16. Recent important work on Athenian law includes: Carcledge, Millen et al. 1990; Todd

1993; Cohen 1995; Johnstone 1999; Christ 1998; AJlen 2000.17. Military: essays by Hanson and Srrauss in Ober and Hedrick 1996; Ober 1996, chapter 5.

For a differing view: K. Raaflaub, chapters 3 and 5 in Morris and Raaflaub 1998.18. Citizens and non-citizens in Athens: Christensen 1984; Carcledge 1993; Ober 1996, chap­

ter 11; Cohen 2000; Allen 2000; Humphreys 1993; Pancrson 1998; Whitehead 1977. Itis sometimes claimed (recendy by Rose 1999) that the fifth-ceneury democracy dependedon military-supported imperialism and thus on the systematic exploitation of excraterrico­rial colonial subjects, but the nature of fifth-ceneury Athenian imperialism is hody con­tested. The fact that democracy antedated the empire, and flourished for 80 years afterAthens' loss of empire speaks against any direct correlation between imperialism anddemocratic politics.

19. Jones 1999 argues that all Athenian civic organizations evolved in response co democracy, insome cases to provide an alternative to democratic egalitarianism.

20. Democratic space: Schuller, Hoepfner et al. 1989; Hoepfner, Schwandner et al. 1994.21. Processions: Connor 1987 and Connor in Ober and Hedrick 1996; Neils and Hood

Museum ofArt 1992. Feasting: Paneel 1992. Democracy and drama: Goldhill andOsborne 1999.

22. On democracy and philosophy: Too 1995; Nightingale 1995; Yunis 1996; Euben 1997;Ober 1998. On literary theory: Ford (2000).

23. Such is the argument ofseveral collections intended co relate the work of political theoristsand classicists: Euben 1990; Dunn 1992; Euben, Wallach er al. 1994; Ober andHedrick 1996.

24. The "crisis" of the fourth-ceneury democratic polis was major motif of Greek historicalscholarship in 1960s, but had becollle lIluch less of a conceCll by the 1990s; compare, forexample, Mosse 1962 with Mosse 1995. See, fureher, Eder 1995.

25. Recent survey of the debate over the date of origin ofAthenian democracy: Morris andRaaflaub 1998.

26. Speculations 011 Dark age political aurhoriry: Sal/arcs 1991: Morris 19i17 alld Morri, 2()()();Whitley 1991. Sarah Morris, ill Morgan (forthcomillg), suggesls pruw-democratic insticu­tional structures as early as rhe 13ronze Age, but evidence is very slight.

27. Morris 1987; Morris 1992; Morris 1996; Morris 2000.28. Solonian reforms: R. Wallace, in Morris and Raaflaub 1998, emphasizing the democratic

aspect and citing relevant bibliography.29. Sparea: Cardedge 1979; Careledge 1987; Cardedge 2001.30. By conerast, Athens' aristocratic/oligarchic rival, Sparea, suffered from endemic manpower

shortages; the restricted body ofSparcan citizens expended much of their time and energysuppressing the ambitions of an extensive population of disenfranchised NAMs. Although

21

•

22 Josiah Ober

Sparta and its allies defeated Athens in rhe Peloponnesian War, Sparta fell apart as a societysoon there3fter, 3nd never recovered from the milir3ty defe3r 3t Lellcrr3 in 371 H.C. Bycontrast, Athenian society recovered quickly from what seemed a catastrophic loss in the

Peloponnesian War.3J. "Modern" features of Athenian economy: French 1964; Cohen 1992. Contrast Millett 1991.

For a good overview of the question, see Morris 1994. Hostility of aristocratic "economicvalues" to coined money 3nd moneymakers: Kurke 1999.

32. See, further, Ober 1996, chapter 4; Ober, "Revolution Marters," in Morris andRaaflaub 1998.

33. History of hostility to Arhens: Roberrs 1994.

ri,

t

I

Chapter Two

Republic and Democracy:On Early Modern Originsof Democratic Theory

MAURIZIO VIROll

Early modern political theorists have very little to say about democ­racy, ifby democracy we mean a political constitution based on rules

that confer the power to take collective decisions to a (more or less)large number of the members of the group and respect basic liberalrights. I Some of these political theorists, however, were republicans, inthe sense that they supported a republican political constitution. Byrepublic or popular government, they meant a political constitution thataffirms the principle of the rule of law and assigns sovereign power toa collective body, as opposed to a monarchy or principality: "All thestates, all the dominions that have held sway over men, have been eitherrepublics or principalities," as Machiavelli put it in the opening linesof The Prince. Republics, in turn, can be either democratic or aristo­cratic. In democratic republics, sovereign power belongs to the major­ity of the citizens; in aristocratic republics, sovereign power belongs toa minority. Although both scholars and non-scholars prefer to use theterm democracy, it would be more correct to use the term democraticrepublic, because contemporary democratic polities are in fact demo­cratic republics.

The implication of these historical and conceptual considerations isthat democratic theory is a special kind of republican theory. It alsomeans that early modern republican political wisdom is a vital sourcefor understanding the conditions and the problems of democraticsocieties. In this essay I intend to explore the contribution that earlymodern republican theory has to offer concerning the relevance of theinternational context for the institution and flourishing of democraticsocieties, the role ofeconomic and social conditions, and the interpretation

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