The Ancients - Athens: Birthplace of Democracy?

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

When we think of democracy in the ancient Greek world, our minds often go straight to Athens, the purported birthplace of democracy. But was Athens truly the home of democracy? And if so, who's responsible for giving a voice to the people?In this episode, Tristan chats to Professor Paul Cartledge from the University of Cambridge about the political landscape of ancient Greece and the origins of this revolutionary form of government. Looking at the radical statesman Cleisthenes; exploring his contributions to the democratic process, and delving into ancient forms of political exclusion and ostracism - can we really call Athens the birthplace of democracy? And if not, where actually is?For more Ancients content, subscribe to our newsletter here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android or Apple store

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode, well, I don't think on the podcast before we've ever dedicated an episode to a particular form of government in ancient history. We're starting to change that today because in this episode, we're talking all about democracy. Democracy in the ancient Greek world. Now, when someone mentions democracy in ancient Greece, many people's minds may well immediately

go to the city-state of Athens, renowned as the birthplace of democracy. And yes, Athens will play a prominent role in today's episode. But was it really the home of democracy? What did democracy mean in ancient Greece? How was it structured and how does it evolve down through the centuries? And also, how did certain prominent figures, how did they view democracy? Were they enamoured by it or did they despise it? Well, to explain all of this and so much more, I was delighted to get back on the podcast, A Legend of the Ancient History World. His name is Paul Kartzlitsch, the A.G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow at Clare College, Cambridge. Paul, he is fantastic. He is such an engaging and eloquent speaker,

and I really do hope you enjoy. Paul, it is wonderful to have you back on the podcast after so long. Welcome back to the ancients. Well, thanks, Tristan. You're very kind. And I remember well our last foray, which was Thermopylae. It seems a long time ago, but great to hear you again and to actually see you again. Yes, and it was a long time ago, but it's good to finally get you back on. We're talking on something quite a bit different from Thermopylae. Democracy in the ancient Greek world, I mean, to kick it all off, Paul, what do we actually mean? How should we define democracy in the ancient Greek world? Well, in a way, we shouldn't define it that broadly because, yes, the word was invented

by the ancient Greeks. I'll come back to what it may have meant. But it wasn't the case that there was a Greek democracy because there wasn't an ancient Greece. There were lots and lots of Greek cities. And the one we're going to be talking about most and the one that actually invented what came to be called democracy was Athens. So when we think about that, we think, what does the word mean? It's a two-part word. It's composed of demos, which means people, or the main section of the people, so the majority of the empowered adult male free citizens. So that's one ambiguity, So that's one ambiguity, all the people or the majority. Kratos, the other bit of the word, is unambiguous. It means strength, power, force. So it comes out as force or strength of the demos,

meaning either the people as a whole, all the citizens, or the majority of them. Now, if you take the first, all the people, it's a sort of romantic, in a way, term. It's broad and vague, like when at the famous battle at Gettysburg, Lincoln pronounced that America was a democracy. What did he mean by that? Government of the people, by the people, for the people. And so you say, okay, which people? Because, for example, it didn't include female people, nor did it include non-white people. Well, in the same way, when the Greeks said demos, they either meant all the people in a vague way, meaning adult males, or, and now this is when it gets controversial, suppose you're one of the elite few. You're rich, you're well-educated, you're probably conservative, and you actually think you're superior to most of your fellow, in this case, Athenians. You won't like to be

in a democracy where the majority are poor and they are, as it were, working class, they're peasants, they're not elite, they're not well-educated, in some cases, not even literate. And yet, collectively, they always outnumber you. So for them, that is for the elite few, democratia could be something like mob rule. Or later they invented another word just to bring out that, which is oclocracy, which we still in some ways use. And it means mob rule, the rule of the many over the few in the interests of the many, not the few in the interests of the many, not the few. So I've gone on about this because we sometimes say, don't we, that the democracy we have is in some ways descended

from ancient Greece. Well, yes, it is in terms of the word, but in terms of the thing, actually, ancient Greek demokratia was far more controversial than our word democracy is today. It's really interesting for you to highlight that straight away, Paul, because let's say our literary sources for democracy in the ancient Greek world seem to be almost, if not completely, written by elite men, elite figures. So has this kind of hindered how democracy is portrayed in the ancient Greek world, if it is seen, as you say, almost mob rule by these figures? It has influenced it. And there is an obvious reason why the only people who were able,

were in a position to write about, to theorise about democracy, were elite few. It's because you need leisure, you need a certain amount of intelligence, you need education to be able to write at all. So all our sources of a written nature other than, and now this is a very peculiar feature of ancient Athenian democracy, when they made a decision, they had it transcribed either onto stone or onto bronze. So if you like, that is the speech, the words, because it's the motion that they have passed of the masses. But in the sense of a history or a philosophical treatise, let's say 95% of our extant surviving written sources on democracy were from the elite who were hostile to democracy. There are exceptions, and a classic one is the, we'll come back to him, I think, politician,

statesman, Demosthenes, because not only did he actively take part in politics, but he also occasionally theorized about why he did. And for example, when he was contrasting his state, Athens, with an enemy state, let's say Sparta, one of the reasons he said we are superior to Sparta and therefore why our society and culture and politics are worth fighting for is that we have a democracy and they don't. So, in other words, he had to justify, explain what he meant by democracy. Got to love the figure of Demosthenes. As you hinted at there, we will definitely be returning to him. But actually, keeping on those sources a bit longer, it's really interesting what you highlighted there with Athens, as you say, a peculiar case. So when trying to learn more about democracy in the ancient Greek world and

how it varied from city-state to city-state, I'm presuming, with Athens, and I don't know if there's elsewhere as well, it's not just literature we have to learn more about it. We have inscriptional evidence too. That's brilliant. Well, this is the peculiarity of a city which, as part of its ideology, believed in transparency, equality of speech. So forming the best judgment, everybody comes together in assembly or debating in a council chamber, and then they have it out, thrash it out, and they reach what they consider to be an agreed and certainly in their sense the best decision. But then once it's all gone through the various processes leading to a debate on the Pnyx Hill in Athens underneath the Acropolis in the open air, they make the decision then it is for everyone who wishes, i.e. including those who couldn't be at that assembly meeting, to read. And so they put up either on the Acropolis, especially if it was a religious inscription that is in some way related

to one or other of the gods or goddesses, especially, of course, Athena, but elsewhere down below the Acropolis in what the Greeks called the Agora, which means the commercial and a legal as well as a political space, would, if he wished, take the time to read what he, that is the Athenian people, had decided. And this is terrifically sort of involving in a consciously ideological way, in a way, of course, with our immensely larger societies, it just isn't physically possible. Well, therefore, let's keep on Athens as we kind of move on and talk about, let's say, the origins and emergency of democracy in the ancient Greek world. We regularly see in popular media or in articles in websites today, the phrase of Athens being the birthplace of democracy.

Paul, how true is this? Well, I take it in a very minimal sense, the word, as I said in my introduction. And there is a huge gulf, there is a huge gap between any form of direct democracy, where when a decision is made affecting the entire population, the citizen body, a certain number of them have to be present face to face in an arena, a space, and they're then making the decision. So that is direct decision-making. And then when the decisions are taken, somebody's got to execute them. So you have people who are chosen, and the Athenians chose their representatives, their executives, in two different ways. One by election.

Well, we're familiar enough with that. But interestingly, not secret ballot. And then secondly, by the lottery. Now, the Athenians believed the best way, the right democratic way to choose an official is the lottery, which is random. It's anonymous. And it gives the maximum chance to, as it were, Joe Athenian citizen, the ordinary guy, as opposed to elections, which favour those who speak well, who are well-born, who are well-known. I mean, our word noble comes from Latin and comes originally from a word meaning well-known.

So the bigger your family, the wealthier, the better, and all that stuff, then you're more likely to be able to stand for office in an election. to be able to stand for office in an election. But the Athenians thought, yes, some offices need to be elected, financial, military, but most don't. And so, as it were, everybody's encouraged to pitch in. Well, before we delve into this structure, I'd like to go into the details of this structure so we get a really clear idea with democracy in Athens in 5th century BC, Athens. But I must also ask, keeping on that emergence focus, what is the story behind this new form of governing? What is the story behind how it emerges in Athens? Well, I think what you're asking is what factors were already in

existence for the, it is the qualitative transformation to occur, and most of us believe it occurred about 500 BC. Some think it occurred a few decades later, but let's say round about 500 BC to 460 BC, this major qualitative transformation occurs whereby a city, in this case Athens, or a city-state, if you like, city-zen-state, maybe 25,000, 30,000 adult males, free birth, enrolled properly, they're citizens. They are self-governing, and their decisions, and we can look at how they're taken, whether in the assembly or in the law courts, we'll come back to both of those, assembly or in the law courts, we'll come back to both of those, are taken by majority decision on the basis that every citizen is equal to every other. Nobody counts for more than one. Everybody counts for one. And you take the decision, in fact, in Athens, typically by raising the right hand,

and then you count or you guesstimate the majority. But nevertheless, majority decision-making on all issues affecting the polity, the civic body as a whole. So, what was it about Athens? Well, I think crudely two things. First, about 100 years before the introduction of what we call democracy for the first time, about 100 years before, Athens had been in crisis. It had had both an economic crisis and a political crisis. They couldn't agree on who should rule, i.e. which of the elite should rule, as opposed to whether the masses should rule. That's another issue altogether. And then secondly, there was a terrific economic crisis of debt, so that many poor Athenians, not just were in debt to some rich Athenian, but some of them, the rich Athenians had foreclosed

on their loan and sold the poor Athenian abroad as a slave to be bought by Greeks in another city. Well, really horrible stuff. So along comes a reformer, and so successful was he. In retrospect, as well as at the time, his name is Solon, S-O-L-O-N. That later Athenians, they couldn't actually decide, some of them, was Solon the founder of our democracy or was, as most historians, most of us think, Cleisthenes about a century later. At any rate, Solon's reform package solved the problem of debt and slavery, but did not solve the political problem who should rule. And so after Solon, Athens, like some other very important Greek cities, complicated reasons, at any rate, fell under what the Greeks called a tyranny. Now, a tyrant, tyrannos, was the sole ruler, autocrat. His rule was based not on agreement, but on force. And he typically ruled with a bodyguard and ruled more or less by terror.

At any rate, Athens had a tyranny from the middle of the 6th century to almost the end of the 6th century, circa 560 to circa 510, with interruptions. But that tyranny, interestingly, for some reason, and this is why Athens was special, E. Thaisistus decided not to overthrow all the measures that Solon had introduced, some of which included giving ordinary Athenians certain political powers. For example, suppose you believed you had been quite unfairly treated or criminally damaged, and then you'd gone to court and you'd lost the case. Well, you could still appeal to another appeal court, and that was an innovation of Solon. And so, anyway, Peisistus and his son, they didn't overthrow the Solonian reforms entirely, though they were themselves autocrats. They were overthrown,

complicated reasons. So, Cleisthenes comes forward. He is an aristocrat, but he has suffered personally from the tyranny. He's been in exile. view that what Athens needs is much stronger safeguards of ordinary people against possible abuse by elite, and especially by a tyranny. And in effect, and we don't know exactly whether he had a committee, I'm sure he did, but we don't know this, but he did a terrific amount of research on the demography, the geography, the religious complex, all sorts of things about Athens. Now, Athens is not just the city of Athens, the urban centre. It's a region. The Greek is Attiki, the Athenian land.

And Cleisthenes and his mates drew up a political geographical map. They redrew the map of Athens such that there were about 140 individual villages or parishes or wards. And then they sliced those up into three big bands of ten so that you have so many tribes. The tribes are then given certain allocations of numbers of seats in the central institutions. So starting from the very basic, the Greek word confusingly is demos, which means village, parish, ward, as well as people. is demos, which means village, parish, ward, as well as people. The demes are then so grouped together they form tribes, and then the tribes, of which there are 10, each contribute 50 members to the central council of 500. And that central council of 500 is the deliberative body which serves as the steering committee of the assembly. And then any measure that the Athenian people are going to vote on eventually in assembly has to be pre-deliberated by the council. It's very interesting. So the council has this restrictive, potentially, power. Suppose a measure is proposed in the council, and the council decide, no, we're not interested in

passing this on to the assembly. That would be it. That would kill it. On the other hand, suppose they say, yes, this is a very interesting question, and the people as a whole must decide it, but we're not going to make a judgment. They simply put it on the agenda of the Assembly. The further option is, yes, this is a very important matter. Yes, it must be debated and decided by the Assembly, and we favour it. And so you've got those three options. Do nothing, take it forward, but neutrally take it forward positively. Council is the key innovation, in a way, of the Cleisthenic regime of circa 500 BC. And so this whole new democracy that emerges, Paul, does it centre around these two bodies then, the central council and the assembly,

just two bodies, or is there perhaps another one too? Well, there is another one. Now, this is more complicated, and I sort of hinted at it when I talked about Solon's appeal court. The word he gave to that appeal court is another, the Greeks had several words for assembly, so it just means a gathering together of citizens, heliaia. What happens between Cleisthenes and the middle of the 5th century, which is where some people say this is what really makes the Athenian system a full democracy, is that the heliaia becomes a court. It's not one court, it's several courts of first instance, not just appeal. And the power, remember the kratos of the Athenians, the demos, which is demokratia,

is exercised not only in the assembly when they make a decision, this is to be our policy, but also in the law courts, because suppose somebody appeals against, suppose somebody doesn't like or believes the Athenian people have made a terrible mistake when they have made a decision. What you do is you can't accuse the Athenian people as such. What you do is you attack in the courts the proposer of the measure that the Athenians took. It might be Pericles, say. So another politician will, in the name of the Athenian people, prosecute E.G. Pericles. That will go to a law court, and there is a new word now introduced, law court. And there is a new word now introduced, not just heliaia, but dicasteria. And so we sometimes talk, historians, of the people's court or people's courts, or we speak of jury courts.

And the key thing is that the lot principle, the sortition principle, the egalitarian, is applied to the law courts. So every year there is a notice put out who wishes to apply to be put on the standing role or register of 6,000 citizens, that's about a quarter to a fifth, who might potentially be called to serve as a juryman in a trial at one or other time in the forthcoming year. And the trials took place on roughly between 150 and 200 days of each year. So roughly every other day, there might be a court sitting, hearing a really major issue of public policy. I mean, that just shows you how we believe in the principle of jury selection. You know, being a juror by lot is thought to be performing an important civic duty. But we distinguish sharply the law from politics.

We claim to have a separation of powers deliberately. The Athenians did not recognise that. If you're active politically in the assembly, you can equally be active in the court on the same issue. You could come to a different decision from your original one if you so wished. What I find really interesting there, and this is my personal bias, we are going a bit further on in Athens's ancient history, but the length of the law courts, the length that they can be strung out to. We mentioned Demosthenes earlier. He's involved, he is accused, he's put by, I guess, an enemy statesman, Hyperades. And that takes a long time as well, 150 to 200 days to ultimately,

I believe, they exiled Demosthenes. It is remarkable how long those things took in the ancient Athenian citadel. It's not exactly that any particular case took that length of time. What I meant by the 150 to 200 is that on that number of days in any one year, a court would be sitting. was the Macedonian question. And they took different views on whether or not a certain amount of money that had come in, ironically, from Alexander the Great's treasurer, who was a Macedonian. But you see what I mean, that they accepted the money, and then Demosthenes was accused of misappropriating it for his own use. The point is this, that you would have rivalries like that going on as long as two politicians both were active and didn't so suffer a defeat as to finish their career. Because the other politician, famously, that Demosthenes had a long-running quarrel with over 30 years was a guy called Aeschines. And eventually, Demosthenes utterly triumphed. There was a law case which he won so triumphantly that Aeschines

went into exile and never returned to Athens. So yes, those of us who think that such personal quarrels should be minimised would not find this particularly edifying. And actually, a lot of Athenian personal politics was not particularly edifying, as possibly no popular politicking ever is. But it was all in the service of getting the best judgment, which would be taken not by individuals, with no cabinet government, no prime minister of Athens, no parties in Athens, just individuals, and always the masses sitting in judgment on them and deciding their fate, as well as deciding the

fate of the city of Athens. Hello, I'm James Rogers and over on the History Hit Warfare podcast, I bring you cutting-edge military histories from around the world. Why was Sitting Bull such a remarkable leader? What was Napoleon's greatest ever battle? How did the Cuban Missile Crisis almost turn the Cold War hot? And who dropped the world's largest nuclear bomb on the Arctic? Through interviews with world-leading historians, policy experts, and the veterans who served, we find the answers to these questions and so much more.

So come and join us on the History Hit Warfare podcast, where we're on the front lines of military history. Well, keeping on a little bit longer, that's in some cases trying to get your chief opponent completely defeated and achieve total victory in this Athenian democracy. Keeping on that topic of exile, what is this ostracism or ostracism? Well, the Greek for a potsherd, a broken bit of pottery, is ostracon. So ostracismos, the ismos, means a procedure to do with ostraca, potsherds. And the reason why the procedure of ostracism, which I'll come back to, was so cool. When you wanted to vote against a particular politician that you wished to see exiled, without loss of civic status,

without loss of property, but exiled, so therefore rendered inactive because you've got to be present in a direct democracy, you scratch or paint his name on an ostracon. And so we debate whether or not it really was Cleisthenes who introduced ostracism. That's what the sources say. Because there wasn't an ostracism, that is a procedure, held for getting on for 20 years after Cleisthenes' reforms. Therefore, is it sort of retrospectively wrongly put into the original mix of the reforms, or was it part of them, really? Anyway, what's the procedure? At a certain point in the year, the civil year, a certain month or 10 months of the civil year, the Assembly is asked every year, do you wish to hold an ostracism this year? Majority vote says yes. Right. A few months later, on an appointed day, there is a space set out in the agora that I mentioned where there are

tellers, where there are officials who are receiving and then counting the votes, like in our council election, if you like. And so you pitch up either with a scratch that is incised piece of pottery, or with a painted piece of pottery in which you've either scratched the name of the guy you want to see ostracised, or you've painted it. Now, why would it be held? What's the point of it? Well, the ancient sources aren't actually very helpful on this, but the dominant view was they thought it was something to do with tyranny. So, why do you want to ostracise just one man? Ah, because presumably there was a risk people were afraid he would become the next tyrant. Well, actually, it was quickly pointed out that really, that's not the

best way of getting, you know, have this very rigmarole procedure, very pacific, when actually politics, if it really was a situation where a tyrant might seize power, ostracism's not going to do it. So the thought is really, it's you've got an issue, really major one, and I'll give you the obvious one. The Persians are threatening to invade you. You've done something to annoy them, in this case, the Battle of Marathon, and the Persians are going to come back in big force to smash you. What is the best mode of resisting, preparing for that? in Britain, should we appease Xerxes, or should we do absolutely everything we can to resist him? And if so, if we go for resistance, what is the best technical means? The navy, or the army, or what?

At any rate, in the 480s BC, as this issue was bubbling, there's this series of ostracisms, because different politicians took different views on that issue. And some of them, so it seemed to the majority of Athenians, ordinary poor Athenians, were far too soft on Xerxes. So we're exactly back to the appeasers of the 1930s vis-a-vis Hitler. They were ostracized. And the guy who wins, so in other words, he's a candidate in every ostracism, but he wins every one, he doesn't get the majority of votes, is Themistocles. And as it happened, the Athenians followed Themistocles' advice, and as we know,

rather unpredictably, but nevertheless, the Athenians and the other Greeks won, and therefore Athens' democracy was not destroyed as it surely would have been had they lost the Persian Wars 480-479. And in regards to making such important decisions like that in hindsight, when you see that, let's say, I know you mentioned it in passing at the beginning, but I feel it's also important that we kind of go over it again very briefly now before we move on. In regards to who would have been casting Ostraka, who would have been allowed to vote in matters like this, it's very different than today. The point is to be absolutely, as I say, egalitarian. Every vote counts for one, none more. It doesn't matter whether you're rich, poor,

smart, stupid, six foot tall or five. You cast your vote. It's anonymous. It's your vote. They believe that this is, again, slightly controversial in terms of the evidence, but I believe there had to be a quorum, that is a minimum number of votes cast for a nostracism to be valid, not a minimum against a particular candidate. And that minimum was 6,000, which is the same minimum for if you want to give a non-Athenian citizenship, if you want to make a foreigner, Greek or non-Greek, an Athenian, 6,000 Athenians had to say yes. At any rate, 6,000 is about a quarter of the citizens. It's a huge number. I mean, think of it in our country, it would be 7 to 10 millions in our terms. So why did they do it that way? It was in order to demonstrate who rules, not Pericles, not Themistocles, Xanthippus, but the masses, the people, the Athenian demos.

And it's, to us, quite shocking. And to anti-democrats in antiquity, it was deeply offensive. And for example, Aristotle, who was in some ways quite open-minded about it, in some ways, but was not a Democrat, he thought it was monstrously unjust that somebody who had not committed a crime would be, who had not committed a crime, would be, as it were, treated as if he were a criminal. Because exile is a really nasty penalty. In the ancient world, as I say, you have to operate in person. If you're exiled, apart from, you know, missing your family and so on, you're inactive. It's rendering you impotent. And Aristotle thought that was monstrously unjust. So in regards to the criteria almost of who could vote, though, Paul, so women aren't allowed to vote, foreigners aren't allowed to vote. And also, it's quite strict as to which males,

if you are a citizen, still could vote too. There are some strict parameters there, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. Well, the Athenians were unusually strict. And one reason was because they were unusually large. So in other words, you don't want to have such a porous system of eligibility for citizenship that you have thousands of citizens, you know, just be unmanageable. So it's a matter ultimately of birth, and then it becomes a matter of double descent. So most cities, ancient Greek world, if your dad was, let's say, a citizen of Knossos, you're born a son, your parents' marriage is legitimate, but your mother happens not

to be from Knossos, doesn't matter, you're a citizen of Knossos. Well, that was the case in Athens until the middle of the 5th century. So the first half century or so of the democracy, people were citizens whose mother were not Athenian citizens. That's very interesting. But after 450, and it was Pericles who introduced this double descent, not only your dad, but your mum had to be Athenian, and they had also to be married. So you had to be legitimate in that sense of birth. And secondly, you had to be thoroughly Athenian. And then there's a procedure. Okay, you're born, you grow up,

when are you eligible to exercise citizenship rights in the public arena, whether locally or centrally? 18. The age of majority was 18. So at that time, your father, if he's still alive, or your nearest male relative, so uncle or on the father's side, whatever, or uncle on the mother's side, takes you to the office of the official in your local demos, village, parish, ward, and it might be Pericles' Collagos. I'll just give you one example of the 140 or so deems. And this person, your sponsor, swears a religious oath that you are who he says you are, that your parents are who he says they are, i.e. Athenians, married, and so on. And then the local official in the Deem accepts you or doesn't accept you, puts you on the register, all written. Very interesting, the Athenians made an awful lot of

use of written documentation. And thereafter, you're qualified to attend the local assembly, attend the central national assembly. When you're 30 years old, you can put yourself forward for the jury courts that I talked about. You can speak in the assembly in Athens at the age of 20. They had different grades. They didn't just say, okay, you're 18, you can do anything. No, you couldn't be an ambassador until you were 50, for example, and so on and so on. Well, therefore, I mean, we could talk now about a few different individual figures, especially during the 5th century. But I think you mentioned the name Pericles a few times.

We might have to delve into detail of this figure in another podcast episode, because he is a remarkable one. I think you mentioned before we started recording, there's obviously quite a lot of debate around this figure too. I guess a more overarching question is with this whole structure of democracy, first of all, let's say in Athens in the 5th century, how important, how significant is this style of government to the rise of Athens during this particular century? Is it right at the heart or is it just one part of it? No, it's right at the heart in this sense. You talked about the rise. Well, it's big,

so it's always got the potential for being a dominant force. It has a geographical centrality. It has certain advantages such as harbours, ports that are navigable, etc., etc., it was likely to be a major state. Add the Acropolis as a fortified centre, it's going to be pretty difficult to attack it and defeat it. So for all these reasons, there's the potential. But in one respect, it's a very key one. The circumstances I alluded to, the Persian Wars of the 480s, 484-79, had a crucial impact on Athens' rise to being a major, one of the two major powers of classical Greece. And it was this. The fleet was a fleet of what we call, using a Latin word, triarenes. So these are three bankers. It's a complicated sort of arrangement. And they're sort of like glorified racing eights, but hugely bigger because there were 170 rowers. Now, these rowers, because they were not rich enough to equip themselves as heavy-armed infantrymen. They

were by definition the poor majority of the Athenian citizen population. The victory in the Persian Wars was their victory. The Athenians were the major Greek naval power, and the poor Athenian citizens were the dominant contributors to the Athenian naval victory. On the back of that, the Athenians developed what we call an empire. It's a little bit extreme because it conjures up notions of the Roman Empire, the British Empire. Well, it was a much smaller scale affair, but Athens' power, that ability to raise revenue, to generate extra revenue on top of the one resource which was unique to them, which was the silver mines, which had been used to the money, the profit from that had been used to build this big fleet.

The silver itself having been excavated by slaves, so we've not got to, we must remember to include, we mustn't forget the crucial role of slavery in the Athenians' rise to economic political power. So then democracy develops quicker and further on the back of this great economic surplus and the terrific psychological boost of having defeated the Persians. It develops further faster than in any other Greek city. And so, you mentioned develop. So, how do we envisage almost this development over time? Do we see changes? Do we see an evolution in the democracy itself then? Yeah, I think evolution is the right word. As I said to you earlier, some people think a major qualitative transformation took place in the 460s.

And this is a reform package. You've got Cleisony's reform package, then the next big reform package, the effect of which is to finally deprive the elites, especially elite of birth, of any residual distinctive or exceptional power. So more egalitarian still, less aristocratic, more anti-aristocratic by 460 BC. And some people think this is such a big transformation that it's really when democratia, the full force of kratos, power of the masses, comes into being regardless. That is when, for example, money starts to become available to pay people to sit on the council. When other forms of public, we call it mythos in Greek, public political pay, for example, to serve in the army, for example, to attend a theatre, for example, poor relief. There are all sorts of public funds made available to enable participation by even the poorest or to compensate, sort of like we would say, social security, social welfare. This is a radical transformation of anything, anywhere known in the Greek world, anywhere ever before. So in that sense, it's evolutionary to me

because I believe Diclaesonis' program was fundamentally democratic. So the Athenians are making decisions on important domestic and foreign affairs, goes through the central council that's approved and going up to the assembly. But I have to therefore ask, are there some cases, infamous moments, where a decision is passed to the assembly and a decision is made, but it is evidently the wrong decision, maybe made in the heat of the moment or something? Yeah, well, there are two, and you probably have them in mind. But I must qualify this by saying they both occur in the context of a major, we would say, civil war among Greeks, but we might also say almost a world war, much smaller scale, but sort of like the two great world wars of the 20th century. So,

this is called the Peloponnesian War or the Athenaeo-Peloponnesian War, war of Athens and its allies against Sparta and its allies. So, the first one occurs in 427 BC. The war was between 431 and 404. So, early in the first phase, there's an issue over an ally of Athens called Mytilene, one of the several cities on the island of Lesbos. And it was run by an oligarchy, so a few wealthy Mytileneans. And the Athenians believed that they were less than wholly supportive of the Athenian cause against Sparta. than wholly supportive of the Athenian cause against Sparta. In fact, it's documented that the Mytileneans were treating with the Spartans to try to get the Athenians off their backs, because they did not any longer wish to be members of the Athenian alliance. So, Athenian alliance. So Athens' democracy has a vote. How should we treat? What punishment shall we mete out to the people of Mytilene as traitors to the alliance? So they've broken a

treaty. They've actually offended against an oath and so on. Anyway, first decision of the assembly, really vicious. They're going to wipe out the entire citizen body, take over the place, the Mytilene area, and resettle it with their own people. Next day, a sort of feeling. Now, did actually all Mytileneans wish to revolt from us? Or was it just the oligarchs who are pro-Spartan, who hate democracy, and therefore they hate us? And so they had another vote, and they decided, yes, quite right, we must punish only the ringleaders. Hasty decision, a trireme, very fast one, is dispatched to countermand the original decision.

Well, that was a case of where democracy in motion got the better of reason. And the rational decision was the second, not the first one. Then the next, we're now moving forward 21 years, 406 BC. we're now moving forward 21 years, 406 BC. In retrospect, you and I know that Athens is going to lose the war the following year. Point is, we're getting to the end game. Athens has been at war for a very long time, and it's suffering terribly. But it achieves a victory rather against the odds. However, for whatever reason, a number of Athenians, ordinary poor sailors, had been unable to be rescued. They'd won the battle, but they were left on these blazing ships, and many of them drowned. We're talking probably about hundreds.

I mean, we're talking probably about hundreds. And so there's a terrific, again, emotional sense whipped up in Athens that somehow or other, the generals, that is the people elected to be the commanders of the fleet, had been derelict in that they had actually not really wanted the Athenians to die, but had not struggled very hard to save them. So they're put on trial for some equivalent of treason. However, the trial was conducted illegally because by Athenian law, you must try everybody individually. You can't try a group of people collectively. They took the decision not to transfer the issue to a court, but the assembly assumed, arrogated to itself, the powers of a jury court, which was again, probably illegal. So for those two reasons, that was a very bad decision. Actually, it contributed to the Athenians' defeat the following year. And so when people who didn't like the Athenian democracy, I'm thinking of Xenophon, the historian, they could use the decision, the mode of decision and the decision as, there, told you so. Athenian democracy, it's a form of mob rule at its worst. But the worst is always likely to happen in the opinion of anti-democrats.

different figure, but you're mentioning the end of the Peloponnesian War. And my mind does immediately go to someone like Aristophanes and comedy at that time. And, you know, him alluding in comedy to contemporary events. I mean, does Aristophanes, therefore, in his plays, does he have a view on democracy in some of these decisions that have been taken? Well, no, that's a really interesting thing, because he brought the theatre as such is a democratic space. In other words, it's not merely a place of entertainment. It's a place of religious observance, but also of political participation and decision making. The other aspect which I've not really spoken much about is religion. And so the theatre of Dionysus, who's the god of the theatre, is carved into the

foot of the Acropolis. So, at the top of the Acropolis, you've got all these temples, especially the Parthenon. So, anytime you go to the theatre, you're very conscious that you're joining in something to do with the heart, the beating heart of Athenian democracy. So comedy was introduced into the religious festival of the Dionysia in the 480s. So coincidentally, I think, just before the Persian invasion, but it's all part of it. And then, as developed by Aristophanes extremely sophisticatedly, he has two kinds of agendas. He's, on the one hand, a brilliant literary craftsman. So a lot of his jokes are sort of in-jokes at the expense of either his rival poets or tragic poets. So he particularly has a go at Euripides because he's irritated with Euripides

because Euripides' tragedy was to him too much like comedy. But anyway, we won't go into that. The issue of Aristophanes' own view will never be resolved. In other words, there's a big debate. I tend to the view that he probably was not rabidly democratic. Others say he was. Others say he was actually anti-democratic. I think that's implausible. But there is one play, I mean, there are several, but there's one particularly where the actual mode of Athenian democratic governance is the whole point of the comedy. And this is a play called The Wasps. Now, why is that the title? Well, the play takes its title from the chorus, that is the main body of 15 to 20, maybe a few more, who regularly intervene. They sing choral odes. They interact with the actors. There are only three actors at any one time. So it's a very intimate sort of drama in a huge

space of 15,000 to 17,000 spectators. I mean, it's unbelievable. At any rate, The Wasps is all about trial by democratic jury. And he makes a lot of jokes at the expense of jurors whom he represents as if they're typically elderly. They're typically extremely vindictive. So though they're meant to approach any case with an open mind, actually, this is the comedy, they all just can't wait to find the guy guilty and then to fine him as much as they possibly can. So there's even a comedy within a comedy where a dog is put on trial for having stolen some cakes. So there are layers and layers. But the issue is, So, layers and layers. But the issue is, are they jokes which are at the expense of the jury system to be taken by the audience as criticisms of the system in, let's say, a good spirit? In other words, this is a democratic space. The play is not reality. It's both contemporary, but it's fantasy. And yet, and now Aristophanes himself several times says, I'm a teacher. I'm trying to get you guys, you Athenians, you stupid Athenians, to wise up to the way in which politicians pull the wool

over your eyes and all that. So there may be a serious element of education involved. On the other hand, a lot of it is simply fantastically, you know, absurd. I wrote a book called Aristophanes and his Theatre of the Absurd because it is. I mean, Lysistrata, the famous sex strike comedy, simply could not have happened. But that's the joke. Absolutely. I'm so glad we talked about Aristophanes there in theatre. As you say, it's a key part of democracy. And also, you know, that debate which you highlighted there. Now, there are other big figures like Plato and Socrates, and you also mentioned Aristotle. But

you've talked about those figures actually already with Dan on the History Hit podcast a few years ago in a similar podcast so we'll we'll leave those figures and if you want to hear about that you can listen to Paul talking about those figures in the chat with Dan. Now for me as many people know I've got a big focus on the Hellenistic period and Alexander the Great and what happens after his death. period and Alexander the Great and what happens after his death. What therefore does happen if we do go to the end of the 4th century BC? How does Athenian democracy, I guess democracy in general in the ancient Greek world, I mean in the mainland, how does it fare with the descent, with the arrival of the Macedonians, with Philip II, Alexander, and then ultimately his successors. First point to make is the reconfiguration of the entirety of, we're concentrating, aren't we, on the Eastern Greek world, because the Greek world actually extended as far as southern Spain,

but we're just focusing on Aegean Greece, what's today Turkey in the east, and the mainland of Greece and the islands and so on. So what changed after Alexander and Philip was that for the first time, all those cities were under an overlord. So whereas previously they'd all gloried in their independence from each other, I mean, there was very rare occasions when Hellas, all Greeks together, actually instantiated itself in political terms. So typically, they were at war with each other, or separate from each other. Anyway, the Macedonian conquest meant that no city, including Athens, was fully independent. However, the extent to which the Macedonians intervened and the successes of Philip and Alexander in Asia Minor intervened and the internal affairs

of a Greek city, that differed. And of course, there were inevitably hankerings for the pre-Macedonian situation. In Athens in particular, we want our democracy back, as it was before you intervened in it. And they did intervene in a very direct way in the 320s. Large numbers of Athenians were at a stroke disfranchised, so that a form of oligarchy was introduced. At any rate, the main point is this, that the word demokratia ceases to mean independent majority decision-making, the poor ruling. And it comes to mean more independent in the sense of not having a direct rule monarchy. So yes, we are subjects of Macedon, but we don't have a person in Athens, for example, who rules us in the name of Macedon. Well, now that did happen, and there was a 10-year period when a particular Athenian was the, in effect, tyrant in the Macedonian interest.

But after 307 BC, the Athenians were allowed not to have such a person. And the word demokratia comes to mean, you and I know this is from Latin, a republic. So not a monarchy, republic. So not a monarchy, not a tyranny. But the configuration of the Greek world as a whole is that now it's divided up into three major territorial monarchies. Macedon, controlling mainland Greece, the Ptolemies, controlling Greek Egypt, and the Seleucids controlling most of Asia Minor, the old oriental part of Alexander's kingdom. And within those three territorial monarchies, there are these polis, they're called cities still, but they're constrained in their foreign policy totally. And were they to try to be democratic, they would be constrained internally because Macedon did not like, as most empires don't like, ruling democracies. And there was one particular way in which this played out, and this is the one exception, I think, the city of Rhodes. Rhodes has four originally different

Greek cities on it, and then they were combined. They joined together to form Rhodes at the end of the 5th century, just as the Peloponnesian War was going on. Well, somehow or other, it seems, Rhodes maintained, partly because of its geopolitical situation, it's harder for the various Macedonian monarchs to control it, a more thoroughgoingly independent sort of democratic politics than any other Greek city that we know of. But even so, we don't really know enough to say that it was just like the democracy of the fourth century, when Rhodes was a democracy of the old kind, direct rule, majority, poor decision-making. Well, Paul, I could ask so many more questions. I'm really glad that you mentioned Rhodes there, because it is another really extraordinary example,

both before the Macedonians and after them in the Hellenistic period. I think just lastly, as we start to wrap up, this is worthy of a podcast in its own right, but we've talked a lot about Athens and Athenian democracy. But from what you've highlighted right there, is it also important to stress that there were other remarkable various types of democracy that emerge in different city-states across this Greek world that, as you say, stretched far beyond just this central part of the Mediterranean? Thanks very much for bringing that up, because I mentioned Aristotle once as not being a democrat, but he was a terrific analyst of all existing political regimes, and he distinguished four

different grades or types of democracy, four grades of oligarchy. So as you rightly say, this or that city could be democratic, but it could be differently democratic. So Athens was the most democratic, the most extremely democratic in all sorts of areas. Other cities would have a more moderate form. I'll give you one example. Thebes in the 4th century BC had a less extreme. In other words, there wouldn't be the power for the people in every area of public political decision-making in the way there was at Athens. There wouldn't be so much emphasis on the use of the lottery as there was in so-and-so.

Now, I'm just going to give you one instance. We think there were possibly as many as 50, maybe more, within the broad 5th, 4th century BC, within the broad Hellas, eastern Mediterranean. Maybe as many as 100 at any one time, different times, had a form of democracy. To me, the most extraordinary one was what we call the Union of Corinth, major city on the Isthmus in the Peloponnese and Argos to itself. Argos was an enemy of Sparta always, whereas Corinth typically was an ally of Sparta. So normally, Argos and Corinth were enemies. But in one period, it's only a six-year period, 39, six years. 392 BC to 386. For various reasons, they allied Corinth and Argos against Sparta. So they were so irritated with Sparta that they buried their differences.

Then, this is where it becomes extraordinary. 392 BC, they tore up the boundary stones which marked, this is the territory of Corinth, this is the territory of Argos. So you now get a single polis, Argo Corinth or Corintho Argos, on a democratic basis, of course, because Argos was a democracy already. Corinth had been an oligarchy. That oligarchy was overthrown, and the new democracy of Corinth allies with Argos and then tears up the boundary stones. Well, now, had that been done more, the old Greek way, in other words, independence of polis, would have begun to crumble. But of course, it was an exception, the great exception. And as soon as Sparta regained power over Corinth and Argos, the first thing it did

was destroy the union. So oligarchy is restored in Corinth, and it's imposed in Argos by Sparta. But nevertheless, very interesting sort of potential experiment. And that key word, experiment, is that right at the heart of this ancient Greek democracy? We see time and time again, they are trying out a new form, almost kind of like when you see the leagues later emerging of certain groups of city-states. Completely right. And some people would say that experiment was at the very heart of the Greek. Some people call it miracle, some people call achievement. Namely, that they're willing to try things and if it fails, fail better. They test to destruction because they are very extreme.

Greeks were typically not moderate. Famously, the Delphic Oracle, as it were, most authoritative religious institution, famously said, nothing in excess. Why did it say that? Because typically Greeks went to excess. And so why is Aristotle always banging on about moderation and having a compromise and a mixed – because most Greek constitutions were not that moderate. They were quite extreme. Well, there you go. Paul, this has been absolutely brilliant. And we still only really just scratched the surface, but I will wrap it up there. Last but certainly not least, amongst the many books that you have written one on democracy,

which is called? It's called Democracy and then, as it were, colon, A Life. And the title wasn't exactly mine because a theory, a system of governance is not an organic body, so it can't really have a life. But it was a way of expressing that this is a vital institution that changes. It's not something fixed. Absolutely. And I think you very much made that clear in today's episode. Well, Paul, it only goes for me, a Birmingham City fan, to say to you, an Arsenal fan, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast and no hard feelings for the Carling Cup win so many years ago. I'm prepared to talk even to you, Tristan. Thank you so much for inviting me and hello to all our listeners. Well, there you go. There was Professor Paul

Kartslidge explaining all about ancient Greek democracy with a particular focus on Athenian democracy in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. We chatted for over an hour but we still only just scratched the surface. There is so much to this massive topic. Now last things from me, you know what I'm going to say. If you are enjoying the ancients and you want to help us out, well you know what you can do. You can leave us a lovely rating on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts from. It really helps us as we continue to grow the podcast. But that's enough from me, and I will see you in the next episode.