You're Dead to Me - Ancient Athenian Democracy

Episode Date: July 1, 2022

Greg Jenner is joined in Ancient Greece by special guests Professor Michael Scott and comedian Alice Fraser as they examine the start of democracy with the Athenians. Aside from it obviously being a system that only benefited men, we will take a closer look at the fundamental issues that still apply today, why you’d want to avoid red ropes and broken pots, and just why the Romans disliked the very idea of it. Research by Rosie Rich Written and produced by Emma Nagouse and Greg Jenner Assistant Producer: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow Project Management: Siefe Miyo and Isla Matthews Audio Producer: Abi PatersonA production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4.

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. All day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster, and I'm the former chief nerd on the BBC comedy show Horrible Histories. Today, we are journeying back all the way to ancient Greece to learn everything we need to know about Athenian democracy. And to give us the political lowdown, I am joined by two very special guests. In History Corner is a classicist from the University of Warwick, TV broadcaster,

author of several books about the ancient Mediterranean world and global history. He's the only guest we've ever had who's been turned into a Lego figure. And you will remember him, of course, from our episodes on the Spartans, the ancient Olympics and the Battle of Salamis. We voted him in for a fourth term. It's the marvellous Professor Michael Scott. Welcome back, Michael. Thank you, Greg. It's lovely to be back as always. And in Comedy Corner, she's an award-winning writer, broadcaster and comedian. You may have seen her many stand-up specials, including The Brilliant Savage, which you can watch on Amazon Prime, or heard her on loads of podcasts, including her funny news pod, The Gargle, her alternate universe satirical show, The Last Post, and frequent appearances on one of my absolute faves, the marvelously silly The Bugle. Who is it? Well, it's Alice Fraser. Welcome, Alice.

silly the bugle who is it well it's alice frazier welcome alice hello greg hello michael this is very exciting to me i'm a big i'm a big history fan i would say you paused on the the adjective i'm not convinced by that answer at all i will have to see we'll have to see well i feel like a fan is a good is a good thing because I think buff would indicate that I know something, whereas fan means I sort of don't know you, but I'm vaguely impressed by you. Okay. The area of history that I was interested in when I was vaguely academic was not ancient, but I always liked ancient history because it's less upsetting. All the bodies are much older.

And within ancient history, of course, that the Greeks are better than the Romans. Boo the Romans, yay the Greeks.ks oh hang on all right let's just keep the turf wars out of this one come on greg we know you look at your beard look at your hair you're on the greek side of things so what do you know we begin as ever with a so what do you, where I have a go at guessing what you, the lovely listener, knows about our subject. And I think you know a fair bit about this one. Athens is widely understood as the birthplace of Western democracy, inverted commas, even if that is a somewhat problematic trope. We'll get to that later. You may be imagining the Parthenon, the Acropolis.

You may have visited them on your holidays. imagining the Parthenon, the Acropolis. You may have visited them on your holidays. But when I say Athenian democracy, perhaps you're imagining a bunch of bearded dudes in white tunics standing around voting for war against Persia again. But is that how democracy really worked? So Alice, democracy is the great experiment, great inverted commas, which shows up roughly 2,500 years ago. The year is 508 BCE. And this whole episode, we're going to be talking about the BCEs. We're talking about roughly 2,500 years ago, give or take. Give or take what? Well, there's some debate. But 508 is sort of the birth year that's normally given.

What do you think was the system beforehand? Who do you think held power in Athens before 508? I assume it was an elaborate system of whoever won the biggest arm wrestle. Buff dudes arm wrestling. Buff dudes? Is it an accurate guess? It is a really good guess. So 508 BCE, which is the date that traditionally we talk about as the kind of invention of democracy. That is, if you want to be technical about this, the archaic period of ancient Athens. And

basically the whole of the six centuries, the hundred years before we get to 508, Athens was in a lot of turmoil. A century before, this guy called Draco, not the Harry Potter Draco, Draco had passed a bunch of laws from which we get the term draconian. He was passing all these laws that were really, really strict to try and just get some kind of order back into Athens that was in a complete and utter mess. Post Draco, you get another guy called Solon who turns up and he tries to sort of be an arbiter and set out the rules and get everything working again. But do you know what? He writes his own poetry about what he did. I mean, can you imagine if Boris Johnson started writing poetry about his time in office in the UK? I don't need to imagine. Our biggest billionaire in Australia, Gina Reinhart, our mining billionaire, wrote a poem and had it inscribed on some rock. And it is quite possibly the worst thing ever inscribed on a rock.

And it is quite possibly the worst thing ever inscribed on a rock. Given the Greeks inscribed a lot on a rock, that is saying, that is saying stuff. I mean, he did some good stuff, but doesn't really fix any of the problems that Athens is facing. And so we get into a period of effectively arm wrestling between the biggest, strongest, elite, most powerful aristocrats. And we call these guys kind of tyrants. And one of the most famous is a guy called Peisistratus. I mean, he gets no marks for his name, but he does get marks for how he managed to convince the Athenians to sort of listen to him and give him power. Yes, Alice, Peisistratus is a bit of a sneaky chancer and he uh he sets something up to win the sympathy of the crowds oh uh when he murders someone he says i can't help it i'm a pisces like it's a charming little

astrology foible it's just who i am he fakes an ambush on himself he uh basically self-inflicted wounds and he runs into the town square and says, I've been attacked. I've been attacked. I need bodyguards. And then he uses those heavies to take power. Hooray. As somebody who won a lot of fights as a child by pretending that I was worse hurt than I was until my twin brother leaned over and then I whapped him, I approve of this tactic. I have a lot of sneaky respect for Peisistratus because, I mean, despite the fact that, yes, okay, he cheats and lies his way into power,

that doesn't work for very long. People discover it, go, hang on a sec, and chuck him out again. But is he done? Is he down? Is he out? No. He comes back just a couple of years later with an even better plan. So if it hasn't worked with a bodyguard, what do you think he does next?

If it's on my tactic, it would be go to your parents and complain. How old were you at this point, Alice? I mean, probably three at this point. Not 27. Although the way some of these guys act in ancient Greece, you would think they are three. Yeah. Well, it's a two-prong approach. One is he marries the daughter of his big rival. Brilliant plan.

Smart move. Second plan, even more impressive. Find the most beautiful girl in Athens. Dress her up as a goddess, particularly Athena, the patron goddess of Athens. Put her in your chariot as you ride through the city and claim that the goddess herself is on your side. How does your new wife feel about this sexy goddess lady in your carriage? Don't complain about what the gods and the goddesses want to do. What I want to know is how did anyone fall for this?

Because they've never seen a goddess before and she's a glamorous lady. She's called Phae. She's very tall. She's got lovely blonde hair. And yeah, he just dresses up and says, just pretend to be a goddess. And everyone's like, brilliant, great, goddess in town. So already we're seeing that Greek politics is more WWE than it is the West Wing, isn't it? I mean, also knowing Greek gods, you could just take a vase and say, well, that's the god pretending to be a vase.

Much cheaper. Yeah, or a goose or a swan. Or just claim that you can see her, but no one else can. This is why I have such respect for Peisistratus, because he gets in power again, so second time as tyrant through this cunning ruse, but he then gets chucked out again. And is he down? And is he out?

I mean, really, frankly, none of our politicians have anything on this guy, because he comes back a third time. Third time lucky. And this time he he comes back a third time third time lucky and this time he does it in a good old-fashioned way he just turns up with a whole army um wrestle time lads yeah exactly uh and that time he then stays in power right and he's in power from i think the date is 546 bce to his death in 527 so third time a charm works brilliantly also i just want to quickly mention that his

rival is called megakles uh which is the best name and i just imagine him as a giant robot transformer who fights with optimus prime so i'm really sorry i mean now i understand why he kept winning it's because everyone thought that his rival was a super villain if your rival is a super villain you must be a good guy you can't be a good guy you'll be called megakles can you it's such a bad guy name uh and megakles falls out with him because pisostratus refuses to have sex with his daughter oh well the sources are a little uh unclear here um because the the way the greek talks about it is that either it's it's not consummating the marriage or it's refusing to consummate the marriage in the usual way. And I will leave that to the imaginations of our listeners.

Yes, maybe we'll back off from that. But he's got two kids from another marriage. The classical interpretation I've heard is he's got two kids from a previous marriage and he doesn't want to get another kid in the way because he wants those two kids to inherit power they are hippias the elder and hipparchus they are the ed and david milliband of the ancient greek oh now that's really interesting actually because one of because one of the supposedly hippias the elder one is supposed to be the really wise one and hipparchus the younger one is supposed to be the slightly foppish arty you know spends all this time so we're going let's have art festivals, darling, sweetie. So I don't know which Ed and David you want to put to hippias. I'm not going to stake that claim. I'm just going

to say that one of them ends up in power, hippias, right? And then his brother sort of is his backup. But we end up with a curious love triangle, a gay love triangle, which brings about democracy in some strange way. Do you want to explain what the love triangle, which brings about democracy in some strange way. Do you want to explain what the love triangle is, Michael? This is where I put my little academic hat on and go, well, it depends on which sources you choose to believe. OK. Because Thucydides, who was writing history in the 5th century, so almost 100 years on from this moment, his story about Hippias and Hipparchus is that there was indeed this love triangle. Also Thucydides, he never met a talking bat he couldn't, so I'm not sure you want to

believe him. The story goes like this, and Alice, you can be our arbiter whether you buy it or not. Hipparchus, who's our arty, foppish kind of co-ruler guy, the younger brother. He falls in love with a beautiful young youth, male youth called Harmonius. But Harmonius is already in a relationship with an older man called Aristogiton. Harmonius rebuffs Hipparchus because he's already in a relationship with Aristogiton. Hipparchus takes the huff and as a result then spurns Harmonius' sister in an official Athenian civics religious ceremony. And as a result of all that, Harmonius and Aristegiton decide to kill Hipparchus and Hippias. And we end up with three of them dying, but Hippias survives, right? Harmonius and Aristegiton get a bunch of mates. They go along to this big civic festival in Athens that's called

the Panathenaia, and they've got daggers hidden under their cloaks. They kill Hipparchus. Hippias escapes. Hippias then has Harmodius killed, and in some sources also Aristagyton killed. And at that point, Hippias turns into cruel tyrant ruler for another decade or so. I mean, this sounds like fan fiction to me, but I like it. This is definitely the fans are taking this show in a different direction, aren't they? So this was in 514. Then in 510, the Spartans show up on the Athenian doorstep going, we're here to get rid of Hippias. And you're like, why would the Spartans get involved in anything to do with Athens. It's because they had been told by the Delphic Oracle that they must free Athens. Why had the Delphic Oracle been involved in telling

the Spartans to free Athens? Because the rival aristocratic family to that of Hippias and Hipparchus and before them, Pasistratus, had over the last decade been building a new temple for the Oracle at Delphi. And amazingly, while this was happening, the Oracle would tell the Spartans at every opportunity they had to liberate Athens from the tyrants and install, surprise, surprise, the family who were building the temple for the Oracle at Delphi as their rulers instead. Lobbying. I mean, that is a great move. I mean, I always sort of assumed that the Oracle at Delphi talked their rulers instead. Lobbying. I mean, that is a great move.

I mean, I always sort of assumed that the Oracle of Delphi talked like my six-month-old talks, which is to say, you can't really understand it, but you're like, she said bird. Yeah. I mean, clearly there's some family politics happening here and perhaps they're wangling it. So the Spartans are in, and then we have the son of Megacles, my favourite, the robot. Is the son of Megacles, my favourite, the robot.

Is the son of Megacles called Minicles? Come on. No, he's called Cleisthenes, which is a much more adorable name. He's Mr Democracy, right? 508 BCE. He invents it, apparently. But he's had a complicated youth. He's been exiled, hasn't he, Michael? He's been off out of the city and living elsewhere. And then he comes back in. How does he get hold of power? Yeah, Cleisnes, he's not really a great pinup as the inventor of democracy. Because by this stage, by 510 to 508 BCE, he's actually 62 years old.

Oh, really? He's not this radical youngster comes screaming in on horseback going, democracy! He's an elite aristocrat. And his family have been part of all the political infighting in Athens for the past century. And as we've seen with this manipulating the Oracle at Delphi stuff, they're absolutely masters of playing the game. So they've got rid of Hippias. He's been ousted by the Spartans. Cleisnes is back in town, but the same old game is afoot. Cleisnes has a big rival, a guy called Isagoras. Isagoras tries to bring the Spartans back in, but Cleisnes plays the blinder.

And he realises for the first time, although any of these elites, there's a whole mass of poorer, less educated, unelite people in Athens who were just sort of waiting to be welcomed into somebody's gang. And Herodotus, the ancient historian, reports that Cleisthenes simply invited the people, the mass of the people, to be part of his gang. So you're saying a very rich and elite man decided to leverage the power of the, let's say, stupid and resentful masses. It's a good thing democracy isn't like that anymore, huh? And to do so with a nice dollop on the top of anti-Spartan sentiment, you know, kind of say, like, we're Athens, we don't, those nasty Spartans over there who are trying to interfere in our world and our gang. And they're associated with Isagoras, my rival, but I am power to the people and Mr. People, et cetera.

Yeah, that's it. That is the start of the story of democracy. It isn't exactly genius or inspiring stuff. On the other hand, it has been consistent ever since then. True to the brand. Yeah. Look at them nasty foreigners. Come support me.

I'm not elite like the other elites, but you secretly are. That is brutally same, same. Yeah. It's devastating, isn't it? So along comes Cleisones with his big, shiny new idea. And where does he get it from is the question? Because I know some scholars recently have been making really fascinating cases saying democracy maybe existed in ancient China, ancient India. It may not be a Greek invention. Now, today we're talking

just about ancient Greece. We're just talking about Athens because that's a huge subject in its own right. But Cleisthenes lived in exile for part of his life. So he maybe was exposed to other ways of thinking, other systems, other ancient cultures. So I'm just curious, Michael, do we know where he gets his big idea from? Yeah, I mean, we know strangely little about where he's got these ideas from. And frankly, I mean, it wasn't like he turned up with a sort of one pager and went, this is my reform package, lads. He was just basically making it up as he goes along. The people, the mass of the people rebel and actually chuck Isagoras out. And then they will turn to Cleisathes and they go, okay, what next?

And I suspect at this point he went, I'll get back to you on that. But he did then have, and what's then really accredited to him, which I think he does deserve a big round of applause for, is a genius reorganisation of the state. It's a bit like rejuring constituency boundaries in UK politics. What's the Greek word? Deems? Demis? Deems. The tiny unit of civic organisation in Athens is called a deem, and there's about 139 of them. These deems are organised into slightly bigger groups that are called trites. But what Cleisnes does, which is the really smart bit, is he says, okay, we'll take a trites that is by the coast. We're talking about the big

territory that Athens controls, which is called Attica. And people by the coast have tended to be moderate politically. They're often commercial traders, those kind of guys. Smell like fish. Exactly. Yeah. He takes a trites of inland heartland agricultural lot who are the kind of obvious sort of oligarch elite supporters. And he mixes that with a treatise of people from the city centre. And he makes these three treatises come together in a single tribe. So he makes a bunch of moderates have to actually liaise and work with a bunch of oligarchic supporters and a bunch of people power supporters. And that creates his new 10 tribes of

Athens. And that is his big revamp. Basically, that you have to fight among yourselves before you can get anything done. So you're too busy to argue with him. Is that the plan? Because that, I mean, that's very good. Have the arguments elsewhere before they come here. But also, it means that fundamentally, all the old loyalties, whether they were to your friends in one place or to your landlord and the elites in another place, don't actually matter anymore. Because these tribes are the way now that you engage with every kind of city business. That's your group now that elects a military general to help lead Athens in war. That's your group that you might actually fight in when you go into battle. That's your group that you actually, when you go to the theatre, you sit with. He sort of squashes these

groups together and makes them have to do everything together going forward. And just to bring in the Oracle at Delphi one more time, the 10 tribes, they were each given a name that were named after some of the legendary heroes of Athens. And apparently, Cleisthenes went to the Oracle of Delphi with the list of the names and went, do you approve? And the Oracle of Delphi went, I approve. So the 10 tribes of Athens, this new organizational system had divine approval. You can't argue with that. Wow. I mean, that's almost as good as getting the people to vote for the name of something, which we'd end up, of course, with Boaty McBoatface.

Boaty McBoatface, I think, for democracy. Oh, very good. Very good. We should probably talk about some of the administrative reforms. Yes. Tell me about the administrative reforms. Admin, admin, my favourite. Give the people what they want. But I mean, Michael, we're talking here about, I mean, there's a legal system and there's also a kind of council system. I think it's really important to mention that at the moment, no one is calling this system democracy. The word doesn't exist. What they are talking about it in terms of is this Greek word, it's isegoria. Everyone's got an equal right to speak. That's what they're calling the system. And that's at the very basis of the admin reforms is that every

male adult citizen has the right to speak in the assembly and they debate all the issues. And at the end of it, they vote on what they should do. And it's a kind of majority vote rules kind of thing. So you've got the assembly. Then guiding the assembly is a council that's called the Bulaire. And every tribe contributes the same number of people to the Bulaire. And as far as free speech goes, how much like Twitter is this? Utterly, entirely.

As long as you had the guts to stand up and say it, and you could say it in an attractive and engaging way in which everyone didn't just go like, God, he's talking again. Go for it. But would Elon Musk try to have bought Athens is what I want to know. Because I mean, you say the citizens who can speak, but when, I mean, Alice, you probably can guess this. Who do you think is not allowed to speak in a political sense? Me, me, especially me, mostly me. Yes, definitely me. I'm afraid you would fall into the no speaking category. It's women, it's foreigners, it's the enslaved, which of course is a huge percentage of the population, Michael, a third perhaps of the population. Yeah, I mean, at its biggest, Athens and Athenian democracy probably only had 50,000

male adult citizens out of a total population of at least a couple of hundred thousand when you add back in women, children, slaves. We talked about the elites having power previously, and then democracy came along, or at least equal rights speak in the assembly, which gave a slightly larger number of elites to have total say about what happened in Athens. Yeah. And the boule sits often for 35 days in a row. It would be in session for 300 days of the year. It's sort of always on. Yeah, I think the boule is actually where you look at it and go, wow, this is actually something we could possibly learn from in the modern world. Because, I mean, at the end of the day, we have a profession of politics, right?

in the modern world. Because, I mean, at the end of the day, we have a profession of politics, right? It's the heartbreaking thing about modern democracy is the people who end up in charge are people who pursued a career in politics, which by definition is... Yeah, whereas that doesn't exist in ancient Athens. Every single male adult citizen, okay, once we swallow that kind of difficult, bitter pill, every one of those people equally could end up on the top governing council, the boule of the Athenian state, because it was a sort of random lot that they chose people by. You're only allowed to do it twice in your life, and you couldn't do it in two consecutive years. So actually, with that kind of turnover, we estimate that something like two thirds of the entire adult male citizen population had the experience of being on the top council of Athens

at some point in their lives. And that means that a huge number of people had direct experience of actually being at the very epicentre of political affairs, not just turning up in the assembly to hear the debates and speak in the debates, but actually being there in the council. And the boule, some of the members would have to sleep overnight and guard it. And then that kind of smaller council, which is called the prytanase, is they have to sleep in the agora overnight. And they're kind of the emergency response unit. So, you know, if somebody turns up in the middle of the night going, oh my God, big issue, big issue, you know, they're there, ready, you know, at a moment's notice to respond. So this was really people being direct controllers of their system and everyone having some part to play in it.

And there's also the legal system, too. But their legal system is huge, right? I mean, they're often trying to get jurors in the hundreds or thousands even into a courtroom sometimes. Yeah, again, so everyone alongside being able and ready to be on the boule or to speak in the assembly, everyone was also, of those adult male citizens, was supposed to be available to be a juror. And so there would be these long jury lists called up. And then each day when juries were actually required, again, by randomised lot systems. And they had these like cool voting machines with black and white balls, like lottery machines that would sort of choose up to 6,000 jurors.

Then juries of 500 were totally normal. You know, so this idea of 12, 12 people good and true, like kind of that's minuscule. This is a huge amount of responsibility for these people participating in the democracy no wonder women and slaves weren't allowed to participate someone had to get shit done yeah this is a system that requires your constant input and actually that was that was key to its success that everyone who was eligible to be part of it kind of grew up being enculturated into a system in which this was what you did. There's even a comedy play by an ancient comedian called Aristophanes,

where he writes about people who are addicted to serving on juries. They're kind of like, oh, my God, I love this stuff so much. And one son has to actually bar his dad and lock him up in the house to stop him going down volunteering for jury service. I mean, that sounds like a weird impulse, but people genuinely pay money to vote on reality television shows nowadays. You have to call in on the hotline. So, I mean, makes sense. And actually on that note, Alice,

there was a point later on in Athenian democracy where they do have to start paying jurors for their service because they realise not everyone can take part because people have jobs to do. Yeah. By the time we're into the 460s, 450s BCE, two things have happened, which I think are really important. One is they're actually calling this system democracy. Demos, the people. Kratos, power. So power to the people. And it's such a cool name in Athens in the 460s and 450s. The boys are actually being called as their first names, Democratos, and this idea of like, hey, democracy, how are you doing?

Like this is actually the name of kids. I don't know why you're laughing. My child capitalism is an extremely sweet little boy. It's like naming your kid Cleggmania. Athens is incredibly proud of its new system. But they are also realising that there is a reality here that, you know, yeah, sure, you're an adult male citizen, but you are fairly low income, you're running a farm on the outskirts of the territory of Attica, there is no way you can afford to leave your farm, to wander into the city, to listen to all the debates, to say something maybe and then go back again, or take your time on

jury duty. So in the middle of the fifth century, they introduced pay for jury service so that they can have a good representation of all the different economic classes of adult male citizen kind of on their juries. And we need to talk about the assembly, direct democracy, actual physical democracy happening. Do you know how it worked? I mean, I know how assemblies work. You sing the school anthem and then the principal gives a speech and then you get the awards and then they talk about how the tuck shop's going to be closed for a couple of hours for renovation what is involved then where is the assembly happening is it up on a hill the assembly happens on the nicest place for you to go in monday athens to

have a picnic oh okay so that's my tip. If you're in Athens, forget the Acropolis, forget the Parthenon, rubbish, rubbish. Go to a nearby hill called the Pnyx, where I can try, it's an archaeological site, but no one will ever be there because no one really knows about it. And you can sit on this nice hill overlooking the Parthenon and the Acropolis, and you can see the whole of Athens and you can have a lovely picnicning. I thought pinnix was what they called it when a guy sent you a picture of his junk. We're talking here about what, 6,000 people on a hill? Yeah. Yeah. So this is the slight issue, right? That, you know, we've said, we've said in theory, this system is a direct democracy in which every adult male citizen gets to turn up and listen and

have their say. And we've said that, you know that at its height, that's probably around 50,000 adult male citizens. But 50,000 people on a hill is one big hill. And the PNICs is definitely not that big. So this is where academics really come into their own. They've measured the space of the PNICs and then they've worked out the average space that an individual body needs. And then they've divided the total PNIC space

by set to individual body space to come up with a maximum figure, which is about 6,000. Yeah, I mean, unless they're standing on each other's shoulders body needs. And then they've divided the total pedic space bisect to individual body space to come up with a maximum figure, which is about 6,000. Yeah. I mean, unless they're standing on each other's shoulders and they've all been to circus school and it's actually human pyramids. I don't think anyone considered that as a viable option in their thinking. And I think they should have done. Okay. So 6,000 people gather on a hill. Someone says, who wishes to speak? And you can speak, right, Alice? Yeah. I mean, have they calculated how loudly you would have to shout? Yeah. So there is a piece of stone architecture that's still there today, which is the speaker's

platform where you sort of stood up so that you were raised up above everyone else. But then absolutely, it was down to how well could you speak? How well could you project? How eloquent and persuasive and oratorical had you been trained and been taught to be? And as a result of all of that, that would depend how much people listen to you. Also, imagine if you had a plummy voice. Oh, yes. A lovely, a lovely resonant tone. from that farm on the outskirts of Attica, who had bothered to leave his farm and travel all the way into and be one of those just over 10% of the Athenian males who had bothered to come into the assembly and turn up. And you stood on that platform and went, well, no one's going to listen to you. Whereas if you turn up and you are the elite, persuasive, unaccustomed as I am to public speaking kind of a guy, everyone's going to listen to you.

And that was the fundamental problem of democracy that the ancient Athenians never solved. Okay, so democracy means people power, demos kratos, people power. And the word comes 50 years after the invention. So actually, when we said at the beginning, 508 is where democracy invented, actually, it's happening long after Cleisthenes is dead. Democracy, this sort of evolution, is happening after his death. In which case, can we say democracy is more of a fifth century invention? Is 508 a bit early? 508 is a turning point, but certainly at the time they weren't talking about it as democracy. It's not until about the 460s, 450s BCE when they start calling it democracy. And that all times in really nicely with when Athens is really getting quite big for its boots and really quite proud of itself.

And they're a bit too keen on themselves by this point. And we also get these two huge military wins. We did a podcast about one of them, Salamis, and the other one's Marathon. And that perhaps sort of supercharges it. Is that fair? Yeah, absolutely. So Marathon is in 490, so just about 18 years after Cleisthenes' reforms. Then Salamis and Plataea, which is the big win against the Persians about a decade later. And you're absolutely right that all the historians talk about it as this moment whereby suddenly the Athenians, they were fighting not for a tyrant ruler, they were fighting for themselves.

And all of these ancient historians look at this moment and go, this made a difference. Particularly the sea victories, where everyone, irrespective of how wealthy they were, could row, really supercharged, as you said, this idea that everyone should have a say in how the city was run, because everyone had been contributing to saving the city in battle. So rowing, Cambridge and Oxford boat race is actually, we should all be rowing. Everyone, the entire city, Oxford and Cambridge, both cities rowing together. And then we see who wins. I mean, is this an argument against climate change? Maybe we're all going to have to get in a big boat at some point. It's an arc.

Yeah, we're going to have to save the species. So there's another reform in 390 where, again, the payment compensation system comes in for going to the assembly. So we've already had payments for going in to be a jury member, but now also 390, they're paying people to go and vote for stuff. And Alice, I wanted to ask a little mini quiz for you here. What do you think these three things have to do with democracy in ancient Athens? One, a red rope. Two, the word idiot. And three, broken pottery. Am I trying to build something with these three things? By all means, you can. The red rope has to be symbolic, right? And the broken pottery,

that's very Greek. End of a party, I assume. And then you get called an idiot after you smash yourself in the head with a plate, obviously. It's a good guess. The red rope is dipped in red paint and that it is used to corral the crowd to drag them up the hill to the assembly. And if you get touched with the red rope, it means you're going too slowly and you're not taking democracy seriously enough. It's basically a shaming tool. So if the red rope touches you, then you've gone too slow to do your civic duty who invented that the laundresses they're just like ah you know what i think a great idea is but if you are judged to be not

taking part in society you were a idiotes is that right michael yeah from which we get idiot but idiotes in the integrated technically means a private person. So someone who doesn't get themselves involved in all the public affairs that Athenian citizens are supposed to get involved in. So if you're a private person, if you refuse to do your civic duty, you're an idiot. So an idiotes is someone who's not an active member of society. They're a freeloader. And then the broken pottery is how you get rid of the freeloaders or maybe how you get rid of the uh the arrogant douchebags who everyone is bored of hearing about because this is we're talking now about ostracism and so ostracism is like this bird maybe australia it is you've got plenty of lovely flightless birds um no it's it's based on the word

ostraca or ostraca which is a is broken pottery right No, it's based on the word ostraca or ostraca, which is broken pottery. Right, Michael? Yeah, the ancient Greek word ostraca means broken bits of pots. And this was the method of voting that they employed for this rather bizarre system of ostracism, which we think was around from the very beginning, so from 508 onwards. But actually, it wasn't first ever used until 488 BCE. So that's just after the Battle of Marathon as democracy is starting to really gather pace. And effectively, it is definitely to get rid of the arrogant douchebags. So it's a system by which if someone is really

just going on too much, or if there's a kind of real block and system, so there's two big kind of power groups and two big people with opposing ideas, rather than actually just fight through what the idea is, they'll go, right, got a great idea. Let's stop what we're doing. Let's vote on whether to have an ostracism. And if there is a vote that says, yes, we'll ostracize, everyone goes and writes the name of the person that they want to have ostracized, which means to basically exile them, chuck them out of Athens for 10 years on a piece of broken pottery. And then the names will be read out, counted up. And if you've got the biggest number of pieces of broken pottery with your name on, you have to op it.

It's basically reality TV. I mean, you've already mentioned it, Alice. You're voting for the loser here. You're voting to get rid of someone. It's more Big Brother than it is X Factor. You're trying to evict people. So in the the assembly it's show of hands to vote for something so if you're voting for a law show of hands but when you're voting to get rid of someone you write their name down so that they don't come back 10 years later and go i saw you with your hand up mister i was gonna say can you see any problems with a system in which writing a name is the process through which you get rid of someone? I assume that not everyone was literate. Exactly right. Which can lead to some

election tampering, perhaps. We've heard about it in the modern days. We've heard plenty of scaremongering about made-up voter fraud that isn't real. But in the ancient Greek world, we think there might have been some voter tampering. I mean, it comes back to this Joe Bloggs, who comes from the farm on the outskirts of Attica again. If he has bothered to come in, you're quite right, Alice, he's very likely not to be literate. He couldn't write a name. And so there are these lovely stories of particular big Athenian elite politicians. But there's a guy called Aristides, and he gets the nickname Aristides the Just, because apparently, so the story goes, he was sitting there in Athens, and Joe Bloggs from

the outskirts of Attica turns up and goes, I want to vote to ostracize this guy Aristides. He's so annoying. He's so honourable and good. But I can't write his name. Will you help me write his name? And of course, Aristides, because he's honourable and just and good, writes his own name on the potsherd and gives it to the guy and go, here you go, you go ahead to our lovely democracy and you vote. That's exactly like Elon Musk saying, I want to hear robust criticism of me. I believe in free speech because I want to hear people who even hate me to insult me, me, the richest man in the world. Yes, feel free. But apparently this guy, you know, he does, he actually writes his name on it. And as a result,

he gets ostracized. But so that's kind of one end of the spectrum. But then we have a whole bunch of actual surviving pieces of these pottery shards that we've dug up out of the ground that have got names written on. And there was one particular collection of these pottery shards that were found that all had the same name on, very famous Athenian political figure, a guy called Themistocles. Except when people then analysed the handwriting of the about 190 different pieces of pottery that had the name Themistocles written on, they were only able to identify 11 different hands writing those 190 pieces. So was there a scribe? I mean, could you get a scribe to write it for you if you couldn't write?

Now, Alice, you see, you're not a cynical person. I think Greg's a cynical person. Alice takes the non-cynical view where this is democracy helping itself to function so those illiterate people who couldn't write the name could turn up and there was a central scribe system. No, this is absolute cynicism because democracy doesn't work without capitalism these days. So I've just assumed there's a booming business of scribes out the side. Scribes are us, yeah.

The more cynical view, which I think Greg takes. Hello. Greg, the cynic, as he will now forevermore be known, is that effectively this was vote rigging and someone was just basically writing out a whole bunch of plaques with the same guy's name on and then sort of shoved them all into the voting urn and hoped that they would all be counted. Yeah, we're not sure either way. Military generals, often the stratagoi, were exiled and then sometimes they'd be hastily sort of like, please come back when Athens got attacked, which is quite funny. So occasionally

people would be exiled for 10 years, but actually they'd be recalled if there was a military disaster. Very often they're going to be caught up in the heat of the moment and they're going to all be kind of pushed towards something. And then the next day when they wake up, they're going to go, that was a bit of a mistake. And what the Athenian people were brilliant at doing was the next day they would go, oh, it's his fault, the guy who was speaking.

It's not our fault. It's not our fault for being convinced and for voting. No, no, no, no, no. It was the fact that he was suggesting his problem, his fault. So they would always blame the speaker rather than themselves as a collective. Ah, that's how they invented the term, the walk of shame. We should also mention that there are a couple of other really important,

well, democracy pioneers who come quite late, really. Pericles and Ephialtes. Yeah, so these are guys all in that first half of the fifth century, who are kind of, again, making changes to the system. They're not politicians, they are political leaders. They're people who keep coming up in the system. They get voted in as a general or they're speaking a lot in the assembly. People like Ephialtes, great military general, then Pericles. And they are really big voices in the gradual evolution of the democratic system. And they are, well, I mean, let's be honest here. They are tightening up on democracy because they want to see people's genitals. Well, now there's a sentence I never thought I'd hear. Alice, do you know what I mean when I talk about tightening up and seeing genitals? Have I completely lost you?

You have absolutely lost me. Wait a minute. Is this so women can't vote? Because I've been to some comedy gigs where backstage they suggest similar checks. Oh, God, I'm so sorry. You are on the right lines, Alice. Yes is there is that isn't there so this is this is going back to the kind of the the the grassroots of the democratic system it's back to those deems those small tiny civic units that were then combined together into those trites that were combined together into a tribe

and and the way you became a citizen it happened in in the Deems. So it was the little local level where you were officially accepted as a citizen. And you're right that over time, the Athenians get much stricter about who can be a citizen. So they start to say around about the 450s, they start to say, actually, both of your parents need to have been Athenians for you to be a citizen. And as a result, almost overnight, that law is passed. And overnight, a whole bunch of people just lose citizenship, people are just chucked out. So when they were in the deed, they'd be checked whether both of their parents were Athenians. They'd be checked whether they were married when you were born so that you were a proper child. And then crucially,

and here's Greg's fascination with genitals, your genitals would be checked not not just to to check that you were a man but uh whether you were adult whether you were of the right age to become a a full full Athenian citizen it's a pubes check right it's a pube patrol yeah oh no that's a horrible phrase thank you you're welcome I just made it up because you've never made me think Paw Patrol, which is my daughter's show that she loves. And now I'm thinking of Pew Patrol, which is a whole other thing. Clearly, this is where democracy also is part of Athens's power. By the mid 400s, Athens is a superpower. When modern politicians, you know, Tony Blair's and George Bush's and whoever, talk about democracy, they talk about exporting it.

But the Athenians, they didn't give a hoot about exporting democracy, did they? They're not trying to share their great system. They're just using it to empower themselves. Ancient Greece is a weird world because there's over a thousand different city-states in ancient Greece. It's a tapestry of all these different kinds of places and they all do things in their own way. Athens is just one of those city-states. It's not the only democracy. There are other democracies spread out around the ancient Greek world. But you're absolutely right, Athens was not on any kind of quest to turn everyone to democracy. And as we've seen, they get quite elitist, actually, about who can be in their club. There is this real irony and inconsistency between a

system that is saying, if you're in the gang, you get an equal say in everything. But this democratic system at the same time is going to go and absolutely dump on anyone that it really doesn't like around the ancient Greek world. So by the 450s, Athens is in charge of a humongous empire of different city-states that it has basically crushed and said, you've got to do what we tell you to do. So you've got this democracy ruling an empire in a nicely inconsistent and ironic kind of way. Yes, again, 19th century vibes. A scholar's i mean there's a scholar called eric w romanson has suggested there were over 50 ancient examples of what he calls popular rule not quite democracy but popular rule where the people are perhaps having a say alice my favorite example is a city

uh called locris in the ancient g world. Not particularly powerful, not particularly famous, but they have a lovely law that I think is fascinating. Any citizen was allowed to suggest a new law, and yet for 200 years, no new law was passed. Why do you think that was? I think that's wonderful. I think that's a lovely thing. That's so that you can't pass a law to benefit yourself. Oh, that's a kind and ethical answer. You are a kind and ethical person. Again, I'm seeing Alice as the goody here and Greg as the total city. Yeah, the reason the law was passed, but no laws were passed for 200 years, is that you could pitch any law at all, but your neck was in a noose. And if people didn't vote for it, they hanged you.

So you had to be super confident. You had to do a lot of polling in advance to sort of say, yes, we absolutely have this down. People want this law. This was no democracy, right? This was a system in which effectively one person never wanted anything to change because they didn't want to be thrown out of power.

I have that policy for hecklers. You could say anything to me in one of my shows as long as your neck is in a noose. So Michael, we know roughly when democracy is invented, 508 perhaps BCE, but then you get your kind of evolution through it. When does democracy die? It's only at the end of the fourth century BCE when the Greek world changes beyond all recognition. That's when Alexander the Great turns up and he rides over roughshod over everyone and creates a big empire and the whole world changes. So that's the kind of end of the story. But up to that point, it's in a constant evolutionary process of changing, tweaking, getting better, maybe a little bit worse occasionally as well. And it has its sort

of faltering moments. So the end of the fifthth century in 411 and again in 404 BC, there are actual kind of revolutions where democracy is chucked out for short periods of time and the Athenians vote in. They democratically vote in the end of their democracy and give power to a bunch of oligarchs, of basically mini tyrants. No. These groups are then chucked out again fairly quickly in a similar sort of way to how it all started back in 508 and democracy comes back

again. So until basically the world around them changes beyond all recognition in which democracy is no longer a viable option for them. So Alice, we've heard a lot of stuff. You've laughed in shock and horror sometimes, and sometimes you've sort of gone, oh. So I wanted to to ask what do you think about ancient athenian democracy are there any things we can borrow from it other things we should avoid i mean i'm delighted by the idea of paying people to come in and do uh joy jr in this instance vote because i think particularly in america that's one of the things that is really playing against them that they they've set it up so that their working class people find it very difficult to go out and vote and arguably some places have set that up on purpose um but i think yeah the idea of you just you just get paid for this day it's a public holiday and you

go in and you vote i think making it easy for people to vote is a really nice idea also i think Also, I think only men who own property should be... I do quite like the idea of everyone can get up on the platform and have a chat. I think that social media and all of that pretend to be that, but you're not all looking at the same person on the same platform, having their five minutes in the sun. So there's some elements here that we quite like. I mean, despite the sort of corruption and the innate hypocrisy and restricted access, platform, having their five minutes in the sun. So there's some elements here that we quite like. I mean, despite the sort of corruption and the innate hypocrisy and restricted access, actually, there are aspects of the structure of ancient Greek democracy, which we think are quite appealing, perhaps. I quite like the idea of sortition, of using lot to appoint political deciders. Yeah, ball-based. Also the ball inspections. Yes, bring that back.

The ball inspections I'm less keen on. That idea that two-thirds of the citizen body would have been on the main top council during their lifetime is an extraordinary high-level percentage of involvement in politics. And I think there, for me, that would be the real thing to learn, along with paying people to give them the time, the possibility to be involved, to actually have systems whereby we train people and got them involved in the business of actually running our state on a more regular basis as part and parcel of, like we have jury service today, why don't we have government service or citizen service or whatever we want to call it, but where we actually get involved in running our country? I think we should randomly select a prime minister every year, a new prime minister, but you never tell them. That's fun. Just listen to their weird opinions over the

dinner table and apply them. The nuance window. Okay, well, it's time now for the nuance window. This is where Alice and I take a short parliamentary recess. We go quiet for two minutes while Professor Michael tells us something we need to know. So the floor is yours, Professor Michael, what are you going to tell us about? Well, we've talked a lot today about how the story of democracy that began in ancient Greece continues through to our modern world and to our democracies of today. And we'd like to see that link. And people talk so often see that link. And people talk so often about that link. Obama, when he was finishing up his presidency, he talked about it

in terms of a flame lit in ancient Athens, nurtured by the Enlightenment and then fanned by the founders of the USA. But actually, I think we need to recognise the story is a lot darker than that. The Romans hated it. They called Athenian democracy mob rule. They couldn't stand the idea of letting everyone have a say. And no one could for centuries afterwards. The idea of letting people, all the people equally have a say was an utter abomination. And even when you get to the American founding fathers, when you look at the debates they had, they are expressly against Athenian democracy as an option for the modern world. They talk about it and they say things like, even if every Athenian citizen had been a Socrates, i.e. a wise philosopher, Athenian democracy would still have been nothing more than mob rule. We don't want it. And that's

why in America, you do not have the Bulaire and the Pnyx, you have the capital and the Senate, because they much preferred the model of ancient Rome. So actually, when did we start rethinking about how great Athenian democracy really was? And it's very recently, it's the 19th century. It's after the Greek War of Independence, when Greece was freed from the Ottoman Empire, and suddenly everyone started falling in love with ancient Greek culture, philosophy, wisdom, and politics. So actually, our love of ancient Greek democracy is a very recent thing indeed. And the reason I think people try to hide that all the time is that they don't want democracy to be such a fragile thing in our human story. They want it to be a continuum, but actually we need to remember it's

a hell of a lot more fragile and a recent love affair than that. Thank you so much. Thoughts on that, Alice? I'm blown out of my chair by how you were able to talk for exactly two minutes. That's great internal clock keeping. But yeah, I agree. Absolutely. And it's also, I mean, not just in this kind of self-congratulatory way, this line drawn from ancient Greek to modern times I think is also, it's sort of a weird, creepy cultural supremacy thing where you draw this line through cultures that are not actually directly connected with one another as though that we are the direct heirs

of Athens via Rome and like just going so this this track through development that we sort of take credit for I find extremely weird and creepy and as Greg alluded to right it also makes it a very western European thing when actually it's absolutely not and this is something which is much more global in its origins as well as in the different places that it's popped up around the world in our history. So in trying to connect just to the ancient Greeks and keeping it as our thing, it's a very, very kind of Western supremacist viewpoint. The idea that Americans are the heirs of Greece, in what way? How? And also, I think we've seen also democracy itself is very fragile in recent years,

certainly in America. So lots to learn, lots to consider. But I think it's time now for our quiz to see what our comedian Alice Fraser has remembered and learned. So what do you know now? This is your first time on the show, so we haven't got a previous score to compare against, but I'm expecting big numbers here, Alice. Oh, no. I mean, of all things, my short-term memory. Look, I have a new baby, a newish baby, six-month baby. I have an app that tells me, like I track how often she eats, which means that I know for a fact that I have not slept for more than three and a half hours for six months. And

the price is my short-term memory. So I am going to bed not good. Not good. We're very kind on this show, but that's a very good excuse. Don't you worry. Okay, so we've got 10 questions for you. See what you can remember. Sorry, how many questions?

I did say my short-term memory. Exactly. All right. Okay, question one. The word democracy comes from the ancient Greek words demos and kratos, which translates roughly to what? People power. It. Question one. The word democracy comes from the ancient Greek words demos and kratos, which translates roughly to what? People power. It is people power.

Question two. Before democracy arrived, which tyrant faked his own assault to gain power by then giving himself a bodyguard? Oh, I don't know his name, but he was the one who then followed it up with the fake Athena. It was, yes, Pisistratus. I'll give you half a mark. No, no, no. Come on, full point for that.

All right, Michael has intervened. A full point, two out of two. Question three. The year 508 is often given as the invention point of democracy. Do you remember the name of the man who's often called the pioneer? Begins with C? Yes, I do remember the name, but I'm not going to tell you. Clisistratus. Clisist you kleistones yeah nearly yeah yeah i'll do yeah i'll do question four kleistones introduced 139

deems or little villages but they all went into making up how many new tribes 10 tribes it was 10 question five athenian democracy was a privilege for male citizens, of which we number them roughly how many in the tens of thousands? 50,000, you said. Yeah, that's right, in the height of the power. A third of people were probably enslaved. Question six. Members of the Council of the 500 served for a period of one year.

How many terms were they allowed to do in their entire lifetime? Two. It was two. Question seven. How many citizens could gather on the Pinnock's Hill for voting and speaking in the Assembly, according to the maths done by nerds? Yeah, according to the maths done by nerds, 6,000. But I don't think the nerds have considered layers, whether they were stacked on top of

each other in an acrobatic array. Question eight. How were citizens selected for jury duty what machine was used the balls machine it was a little balls machine white and black balls came out question nine what was ostracism ostracism was the the pots the shattering of pots get out exactly voting to get rid of people with broken pottery that's right to vote that was less an answer than it was a word cloud. Let's be honest. Question 10.

For a perfect run, why might an Athenian idiot get red dye on his clothes? Because he was lax about participating and he was lagging. So he got done with the laundry lady robe. The laundry lady is my invention. Let's be clear. 10 out of 10. A perfect score. Slight generosity in the early questions,

but you powered through towards the end. I think this is outrageous time from Greg. Alice, you did amazingly well. You did do fantastically and well done. Well, what a lovely time we've had. We've learned a lot of stuff. And listener, if after today's episode you need to hear more of Professor Michael, then you can check out these previous episodes. A lovely trio. We had the Battle of Salamis, we've got the Olympics,

we've got the Spartans. And if you're parched for more political history, you can check out our episode on the history of British general elections, which was surprisingly funny. These are all available on BBC Sounds along with all our other episodes. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review, share the show with your friends, make sure to subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sound so you never miss an episode. It's time for me to say a huge thank you to our guests. In History Corner, we have the magnificent Professor Michael Scott from the University of Warwick.

Thank you, Michael. It's a pleasure as always. Lovely being with you guys. We enjoyed it very much. In Comedy Corner, the wonder from down under, the absolutely fabulous Alice Fraser. Thank you, Alice. Thank you so much for having me.

It's a delight. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time for some more stories of power-hungry tyrants. But that's enough about me. I'm now off to go and see how many broken pots you need to exile Prince Andrew.

Bye! You're Dead to Me was a production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4. The research was by Rosie Rich. The episode was written by Emma Neguse, Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow and me. It was produced by Emma Neguse and me. The assistant producer was Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow. The project managers were Cypher Mio and Isla Matthews. And the audio producer was Abby Patterson. What makes you feel physically and mentally stronger?

The act of skating. That's my zen. That's my relaxation time. That is the question I ask guests on my podcast to discover their secrets to health and happiness. I see going to bed at the right time as an investment in tomorrow rather than a sacrifice for today. We'll get inspiration from their achievements and find out how they take care of their physical and mental health. I think it is really important for us to reflect on what have we missed, you know. The new series of the Joe X podcast from BBC Radio 4. Subscribe now on BBC Sounds.