História da Grécia Antiga #15 com Donald Kagan, de Yale

Okay we were talking about the the development of the Athenian Empire changing from the original character of the Delian League I think we've gotten to the Battle of you rim Adan which is generally dated to 469 the great victory at land and sea over the Persians and the feeling that it generated certainly in some portions of the Empire that the threat from Persia was over and that created the problem of keeping the Allies satisfied and willing to make the kind of contribution that had been necessary the Athenians certainly had no plan of abandoning the League

of abandoning their leadership of giving up their assaults on the Persians and all of that so that if there was a falling away the Athenians would be wanting to do something about that still another turning point in the character of the league a very important one I think occurred in the year 465 When the island of faced us in the northern Aegean Sea rebelled and this time the quarrel was not about doing the duty that the members of the League had to do it was not about something that was an issue not wanting to take

part in campaigns not wanting to make payments no nothing like that there was a quarrel between the Athenians and the thasians about some mines that were worked on the land opposite faces gold and silver very rich precious metal sources for the Ancient Greek world of which there were not many located on mount pangaean on the mainland opposites a sauce both states claimed those mines and it was a quarrel it was really just about money there was also a Trading Post up there that both sides claimed to have the athenians had established a colony at a

place on the Strymon river up in that region called Anaya hodo the nine roads which lay there when the Athenians established it as a colony would be Called Amphipolis all of that led to and the Ephesians didn't like that the Athenians were moving into their sphere of influence and giving them trouble so they saw us as a consequence of all of these quarrels we built and it was a very difficult siege that the Athenians had to employ faced us is a relatively big island the thasians were a pretty tough group to put down and the

siege actually the war between Athens and faced us actually took something like Two years which is quite a long stretch for any Greek combat and certainly had not been typical of what the Athenians had been able to do against other rebellions when the thasians were finally forced to surrender the Athenians gave them the usual treatment to rebellious States they made them take down their walls to give up their ships and of course the Athenians took control of the mines and placed an indemnity on the stations requiring that they should Pay the costs of the war

for athens and imposed upon them thereafter the same kind of attribute that they imposed on what came and more and more to be to be and were called subject states well that wasn't the first time such a thing had happened to one of the members of the league but what made it different was that the quarrel was not over anything that had to do with the league it could easily be seen and certainly was a way in which the Athenians use the forces And the funds of the to achieve strictly Athenian advantages after all there's

no way that the league benefited from having either Athens or face us exploit those minds it was not an issue for the league at all and yet the Athenians had taken their position as leaders of the league to gain that advantage and that's I think a very important turning point we shall see that it was in the course of that siege of they sauce important events were Happening back on the mainland at Greece which would change the nature of things - but if we just think about the league for a moment I think the sage

and rebellion is a critical moment and that is a good place for us to look at the evaluation that the ancient writers made of this transition our two - sources our major source of course acidities and then also dye odorous of Sicily deriving his opinions from contemporary writers to come up with descriptions and Explanations of why the league changed from what had been a free association of states pursuing a common goal to what was legitimately called an empire here is what diet Doris says he says in general the Athenians were making great gains in power

and no longer treated their allies with decency as they had done before instead they ruled with arrogance and violence for this reason most of their allies could not bear their harshness And spoke to one another of rebellion some of them even disdained the lead counsel and acted according to their own wishes so the Dinos pic depicts a combined situation of which there are thoughts of defection and actual defections from Athens and blames this on the behavior of the Athenians of kind of a tyrannical sort here's what's acidity says now while there were other causes of

revolts the principal ones were the failures in bringing in the Tribute or their quota of ships and in some cases refusal of military service for the Athenians exacted the tribute strictly and gave offense by applying coercive measures to any who were accustomed or unwilling to bear the hardships of service and in some other respects to the Athenians were no longer equally agreeable as leaders they would not take part in expeditions on terms of equality and they found it easy to reduce those who had revolted now here's Where the Sidda tease differs from died doors for

all this the allies themselves were responsible for most of them I'm sorry for most of them on account of their aversion to military service in order to avoid being away from home got themselves raided in sums of money instead of ships which they should pay in as their proportionate contribution and consequently the fleet of the Athenians was increased by the funds which they contributed while they Themselves whenever they revolted entered on the war without preparation and without experience so lucidity certainly agrees with what Theodorus says about the high-handed manner in which the Athenians had become

accustomed to behave and the offense they gave but he points out that the Allies had gotten themselves into that fix because many of them and this is an element either assassin mentioned voluntarily said okay look we're not Going to do this service anymore instead of going supplying ships Manning them doing the service ourselves we will pay the equivalent sum into the league Treasury and when they did so these ian's took that money and used it to pay for Athenian ships with Athenian rowers so that as the league forces grew smaller the Athenian Navy grew bigger

and so through Synod he says it's their own fault in some cases it was not but certainly in many a case it was I think We should not think of died Orson and acidities as contradicting each other they really are complementary they're both telling the same story but emphasizing a different perspective that one looked at it from the Athenian point of view one from the Allied point of view but they certainly are telling it as it was and if we look ahead toward the end of the fifth century by the time we get to the

Peloponnesian War of all the hundred and fifty or more States That were members of the original Delian League only three still had a navy and real autonomy by the time the war broke out three great islands off the coast of Asia Minor lesbos Chios and Samos were those states I'm sorry I should have said two because by 4 4444 39 Samos lost its independence so they're early two states in that category looking ahead that's what will happen that's what will be the end of the Delian League it will be the Athenian Empire in every respect

now while this development was taking place we need to take a look at what was happening back in the Greek world on the mainland and a chiefly I think we should focus on Athens for this at this time there was right after the Persian Wars I said a few words about it before a rising competition for a place of standing in the Greek world that is to say before the Persian Wars were over Sparta had been Unquestionably the leader of the Greeks when challenged by an outside force after the war Themistocles you recall and obviously

with the Athenians at his back asserted at the very least equality with the Spartans and certainly independence of any position following the Spartans or any grant of leadership to the Spartans and as I think I mentioned last time the next 50 years or so are the story of the competition between these two great powers within The Greek world for who would be the leader and there would be many a clash in the course of that time in Athens the remarkable thing is if you look at the internal development of Athens I think you would have

said in 479 semitic leas is bound to rise to the top and become the dominant politician in Athens because of his extraordinary play a role in bringing victory to the Greeks but these things don't always happen that way I I think of course about the second World war where one might have thought the same thing about Winston Churchill's future in English politics but no no no sooner was the war won and I think you know Churchill would have had to gain and was given enormous credit for bringing about that victory there was an election almost

immediately after the war and Churchill was thrown out and replaced by his opponents which tells you about the first rule of democratic politics the first important question That has to be put to all politicians which is what have you done for me lately well he had done quite a lot lately so there's another question that you have to put is what are you gonna do for me next I think that was really what was the Churchill's problem that was not so mystically his problem Themistocles ran into trouble because he he was a kind of a

maverick in Athenian politics anyway although on at least on one side of his Family he was a nobleman like the typical Athenian leader he was not of the real sort of center of the aristocracy with some kind of a less than extraordinary nobility in part of his family and his personality people fans his rivals found troubling because he was not a verse to basking in the glory that he had won but think back in the eighties in the years between marathon and Salamis on the one hand the mystical ease had been able to Convince the

Athenians to do what they needed to do to survive to build that great fleet out of the silver mines that they had strike in the silver mines that they had been lucky enough to have but also he had managed if my reading of the facts is correct yet to get rid of every one of his major political opponents by making use of the device of ostracism if you look at the ATS you will see that just about every important Athenian political figure is ostracized with the Exception of Themistocles who is left in great shape while

the other folks are gone and when the Persians come the ostracized men are recalled and play a role in the war and when the war is over it's obvious I think that they are both not happy with what's a mystical he's had achieved against them and also worried about their prospects for the future with Themistocles being a bigger hero than he ever was so what I think we're going to understand Athenian Politics in the years after the Persian war we must understand that there is some kind of a coalition formal or otherwise in which all

the great leaders of the Athenian political world combined to keep some mystical ease down amazingly enough when we take a look at the early actions of the Delian League in which in every case remember the commander of every expedition is an athenian it's never some mystical ease whom you would have imagined would have Been leading all these expeditions he just didn't have the political clout to get the assignment the man who did was a relatively young man by the name of Kim on a nobleman he was the son of mil tidies the great hero had

marathon and he started out his political career with the problems as his his father had been condemned and but just before his death he had also left a very great debt that Keemun had to repay but came on established himself as a great figure in The Persian Wars and very soon afterward we see him taking the lead in every campaign pretty much that the Delian League launches and he is stunningly successful he's obviously a great commander on land and at sea he's in charge of the great victory at URI Madan and so as asin's goes

from greatness to greatness from success to success and glory to glory and from wealth to wealth Keemun becomes extraordinarily popular with the masses and it's interesting Because he was not the sort of a man who appealed to the lower classes he was a nobleman himself and he never backed off that and as we shall see in a moment his his prejudices about foreign relations were not the popular ones he was a great supporter of Sparta a great friend of Sparta who regularly spoke about the virtues of Sparta and the Spartan system and how Athens could

learn something from Sparta how such a man could have been elected general year after year by The masses of the Athenians is a question we need to approach but he the virtues that he had were to some considerable degree personal that is not only was I think first and foremost was the enormous success he had in commanding the athenian forces it brought all the things i've mentioned and and wealth because the the league expeditions attacking various persian territories brought booty which was to some extent divided up among the armies That did the fighting so that

the Athenian soldiers and sailors actually made a profit out of these conquests of Persian territory or raids on Persian territory naturally that their commander was popular on that score but he had those personal skills that are successful in democratic politics he he just people liked them he had I'm reminded of the same political phenomenon in America in the case of Eisenhower Eisenhower of course had First become the popular politician because of his victory in the Second World War he was in command of the European theater and got all the credit or a lot of credit

for the victory but he had these qualities that made people like him of which you know trivial things can be very important in I said how his case they liked his smile people talked about it all the time and that it turned out he was unbeatable in politics and it was a little bit like that in a Case of Keemun or even though again Eisenhower was not on the on these sort of the populist side of these things he was after all a Republican and he turned out he was pretty Orthodox in that sense but

it came on held to a very conservative position as I will tell you about in just a moment so but the fact is he becomes the dominant politician Athens if you think of him rising to the top as early as 479 when the war is over and then we know that his period of Political success in Athens ends in the year 462 that's a 17-year stretch which is at a very very long time for a politician to continue to be the leading figure in the state and Athens remember an athenian general and it turns out

that the development of the athenian democracy was that it was the generals who came to be the leading figures politically in the state and the generals have to be elected every year so think about how Consistently you have to be popular with the masses in order to achieve the leadership that came on did his pro-spartan foreign policy i think is a very critical part of the tale and i think things would have been very very different if Themistocles had been the dominant politician because it was clear that from what he had already done and what

he will do later that he was anti Spartan and urging Athenian independence in Sparta and and really hostility Between the two sides came on to the contrary he was the official representative of Sparta in Athens he had long family associations with them he went around explaining as I said the virtues of the Spartans and how good it would be for Athens to emulate some of them but more important than that he was always in favor of a policy that had Athens and Sparta allies together equals as they had been in his mind in the great

Persian War when fundamentally the Spartans had led the great and wanting to let in won the great victory on land at Plataea the Athenians had led and won the victory at Salamis at sea and the two states collaborated co-op and in that's how Anthony that's how the Greeks were freed from the Persian Menace and that's how Greece would prosper and be safe in the future and it worked some part of the fact that the Spartans did not object to the Developments in the Aegean and across the Aegean in which Athens moved from being merely the

leader of a coalition to becoming an imperial power stronger every day the Spartans didn't do a thing about it in those early years why not I think a major reason was because Kaman was the dominant figure in half ins they trusted came on they knew that so long as he was in that position he would not be a menace to Sparta and that they could Indeed live side by side in this way it was a a stretch of time 1517 something like that years which was peaceful and as I say probably would not have been

without the phenomenon of the internal developments in Athens itself came on also and his control of Athenian affairs by virtue of his personal standing and his persuasive abilities are also surprising marathon was a victory for hoplites it was the farmers the middling group and those above them had won that Battle but Salamis was a victory for the poor in Athens because that vast fleet was rowed by poor Athenians and now they had the glory for the for the victory and they and every of course after the war when the fleet became the basis of Athenian

strength and glory it was the common man who was and the poorest of the Athenians who was involved in achieving that desirable status so you would have thought and if Themistocles had been in Control I'm sure you would have been right that there would be a movement towards greater democratization of the state remember where we are before the wars begin is cleisthenic democracy which is pretty much a hoplite democracy and which excludes the poor from many of the activities of the state came on ran against that he basically he never tried to unravel Athenian democracy

he's not an enemy of Athenian democracy he was in favor of keeping it the way it was and In some ways actually rolling back some degree of democracy the wage it was somewhat rolled back was that and not by an illegal position illegal action but rather by sort of the way events went forward Aristotle in the constitution of the Athenians describes the stretch of time that I'm talking about by 479 to 462 as the period of the Areopagus Constitution what that means is the old aristocratic Council consisting of former top magistrates gained unofficial Informal but

very real power scholars have had a hard time understanding exactly what it was that was the nature of that power but it looks as though a couple of elements were certainly there and they were very critical that is the Areopagus that was said sort of regained the the oversight of magistrates they were as in the in the aristocratic past in the position of being able to criticize magistrates and to take action against them if they acted in a way that The area this did not approve and it also seems very plausible that even though there

continued to be a Council of 500 which was continuing to function as it had ever since the cleisthenic Constitution had established that the fact is that more and more the areopagus was taking decisions about foreign policy was putting to the assembly when they desired motions they were usurping some of the powers of the 500 they were not Doing this as I keep saying by no chain by any change of the law they were doing it because they thought they could and the people accepted it one reason for it according to Aristotle is that they had

played a particularly heroic role in the Persian Wars at the moment when the Persians invaded Attica and the Athenians were forced to flee their homes and to go to Salamis and to the Peloponnesus to escape for that moment now the poor had no wherewithal to keep Themselves alive when they went into exile in this way and so the Areopagus used their own money to keep the poor alive and in good condition during that period of time they volunteered that action and that generosity and patriotism and goodwill allowed the development of this area polite Constitution in

the years of cape and that's what came on I think really had in mind he wanted to have this sort of dual policy of conservative moderate Democracy conservative in that it did not take any recognition of the changing circumstances that would have given the poor a better claim to political power and also conservative in the sense that it was not going to challenge the dual to the dualism of Greek international relations as it had emerged from the Persian War and that's the policy that Athens followed with tremendous success during the late career of Keemun while

he was at the Head of affairs remember I keep saying he's at the head of affairs and he's running things but remember he's just one of 10 generals who is elected every year so all of his his influence oh yeah I was gonna say his power but it's better to speak of his influence because it's all unofficial he is able to have these things happen because people do what he urges them to do when they don't need to there's no compulsion necessary he is the one who sets the tone and they Follow him centuries later

when Augustus becomes that boss of the Roman world his own statement of the situation put the way he wanted people to think about it was that he was foremost not in power potestas is the latin word but rather in terms of his his influence he wanted to say it was not a tyranny it was not a monarchy it was a republic as it had always been and I Augustus as the leading citizen in the eyes of my fellow Romans am able to persuade them to do These things not because they have to be because they

want to well that was his story and it wasn't true because he had a great big army at his back and if you wanted to move him out of anything he would just have to get yourself killed this was not the situation which came on he came on could have made that speech and it would have been true so all that cruises along until we get to the fasion rebellion came on is in charge of that expedition And it proves to be a much tougher problem than anybody has had to face before the war extends

for a long time there's no success there is there's expense and no payoff and of course there's some as to the legitimacy and decency of what is going on here so the enemies of Pericles I'm sorry of kima and in a moment I'll tell you about them take advantage of the discontent that the sation rebellion is causing to launch an Attack on came on politically for the first time in anybody's memory the opponent's the these enemies have came on are in the first instance a man called Ephialtes and very soon it becomes clear that he

has as a kind of a lieutenant a younger man who was important but subordinate to Ephialtes that young man is Pericles the son of Xanthippus Xanthippus the great Persian war hero we are told it's very hard to disentangle the effects from the stories Here but Ephialtes was supposed to have been associated with Semitic leas and that's very plausible because certainly Ephialtes deserves to be thought of as a Democratic leader with the underlining of the Democrat he is clearly attempting to make a change in the Constitution and de facto at the very least which would allow

the naval crowd the poor people of Athens who row in the fleet's to have more political power and opportunity and he is also very strongly anti Spartan so That he is opposed to both halves of the kamon Ian's approach to things and he works at trying to undermine and to the defeat came on we had no luck at all until they saw us and then they bring charges against came on you know he hadn't done anything wrong all he had done was not win the war very quickly but you know you make up charges in

the world of politics you you've heard of that twice and he they said well the reason He hadn't won the war so quickly was because he had been bribed by the King of Macedonia which is right behind the territory we're talking about not to conquer Macedonia well guess what he wasn't under orders to conquer Macedonia he had no plan to conquer Macedonia didn't need to be bribed not to conquer Macedonia on top of which it'd be pretty hard to bribe him on because although he had started out poor from his father's debts he was now

an enormous ly rich guy Because of the booty which he had a legitimately acquired in his role as commander of those expeditions everybody knew he was like he was incredibly rich and he was very generous with his riches and gave it away in all sorts of ways yeah you know if you want to say that a rockefeller is a no-good lowdown polecat that's fine but if you want to say he's being bribed with money all you're gonna do is get laughter out of something like that and in his son in some way that is A

situation with kima so the trial is not nonetheless launched against team on the the complainant is Pericles this young up-and-coming democratic politician who makes the case against came on he loses of course he loses ki-moon has not lost his support and the case is absurd it's just a sign that for the first time there's some kind of serious political opposition and who is involved in it even before that trial Ephialtes had tried another technique by Attacking the Areopagus through attacks on particular area projects if you don't have any success in the general political arena one

device that is as old as the hills and as new as yesterday is you try to discredit individuals in the regime that you're trying to unseat and so various charge were brought against particular Areopagus they might have had merit they might not the goal was to discredit the Areopagus as a whole again did not succeed in the years that I am talking about these are just the signs of what we're talking about which takes us to the years just after the putting down of the fasion rebellion there's an enormous argument among scholars that never will

go away about just what is the date of the terrible earthquake that hit the Peloponnesus in whatever time the most common opinion is that it was around 464 and that's that appeals to me - and the Earthquake was so serious as to disrupt life in Sparta and in Spartan territory in general and thereby to encourage a great helot rebellion so that the latter even after the earthquake was over was what occupied and terrified the Spartans and it was serious enough that they sent out to their allies and I'm not now talking merely about their allies

in the Peloponnesian League in their allies who had joined them in the Greek league against Persia which was still on the Books asking them to send help against the helots and a number of them did and it's indicative of what the relationship between Athens and Sparta was that they also asked for help in Athens - asin's there was a great debate in the Athenian assembly as to what answer to give the Spartans in their request for help and Keemun of course made the case for doing so and in fact he proposed that the Athenians send

a very large force as these things go in the Greek world of 4000 hoplites that's a very big army the Athenians very rarely send an army of that size outside of Athens into the Peloponnesus to help the spartans against the hell outs and he made the case that athens should not abandon its former ally he he spoke in Panhellenic terms using a nice folk expression he said Greece should not allow this kind of a split Athens should not lose its yoke fellow and the image was a team of Oxen drawing a plough Athens and Sparta

being that team and so long as they're in the same yoke and doing the thing all will be well Greece will be safe there will be no internal strife there'll be no war that's what we ought to do Ephialtes spoke bitterly against that and spoke in terms of this this story is all told in Plutarch's life of ki maan and when I have a look at that he seems to have evidence about what was said at this Debate in the assembly and Ephialtes this Bose who have said something like the the arrogance of Sparta must

be trampled underfoot and he lost the argument came on once again won the argument Athens sends a force of these 4,000 hoplites down into the Peloponnesus they were called on especially spartans wanted them because the helots had run away to mount FL me in Messina which was a fortified place on a mountain very Hard to attack the Spartans had failed in their efforts to beseech or to storm the position there and the Athenians had a reputation now of being very good at siege warfare which they had gained at the end of the Persian Wars you

remember xanthippus had besieged and taken cestas in a very effective way well the Athenians went and had a shot at it and fail at which point the Spartans were a little bit less keen on having them there and then very soon after that the Athenians went to the I'm sorry the Spartans went to the Athenians and and said thank you very much for your contribution we have no further need of your services have a nice trip home instead of being very grateful and happy that they didn't have to fight anymore the Athenians were insulted none

of the other allies was asked to leave none of the others were gone the Athenians were clearly had been sent away not for out of friendly reasons and Thucydides tells Us what was on the mind of the Spartans who made these decisions they had developed a fear of the Athenian soldiers who were in the Peloponnesus they you know do you know typically you don't if the Spartans don't get to see or know anybody else the only time they ever get to see foreigners if they happen to be fighting side by side briefly but now if

you can imagine the scene where these ordinary everyday Athenians having been born and raised in A democracy where there is absolute freedom and freedom of speech and where their style of life is not bad for Greeks by Greek standards and you can imagine these inviting these Athenian soldiers in for for a meal and feeding them a Spartan meal black soup and the Athenians think that this is what you give the hell out right you're not going to eat that stuff right you want us to eat that stuff I wouldn't feed it to a pig I'm

inventing the conversation but You got the general idea and the Spartans couldn't have enjoyed that very much and then as they looked around and since so what kind of a state this was in which there were all these enslaved people these vast numbers of enslaved people not the kind of slaves they knew about the ones who who where you had a like handyman who assisted you on the farm the vast numbers of them doing all the Work while the Spartans didn't do any and then they saw that the business was run by a small group

of people at the average Spartan soldier had nothing to say about what was going on and being Athenians they no doubt said something about that and vicinity says the Spartans became fearful that they would in fact help the helots in a rebellion against the Spartans and that in general he feared the Spartans feared their revolutionary spirit and it Was on that ground that they sent them away in any case there was no doubt in the minds of the Athenians they had been sent away not in an honorable way in which friends treat friends but they

had been dismissed and when they came home they were furious that they had gone in the first place angry with Keemun for sending them and for of course his pro-spartan position in general and in the spring of 462 461 is it maybe I think is 461 they Ostracized kima and off he went that was the sort of the deadly stroke in what was now fairly could fairly be called a political revolution in Athens it was not brought about by force was brought about in the constitutional way but it nonetheless put an end to a whole

stretch of time in which the state was run in a certain way and brought about new kinds of a new new development let us say development towards a fuller democracy but and its immediate Consequences were a complete breach with Sparta the Athenians renounced their old alliance made in the Hellenic league in 481 that was over they turned around made alliances with Argos Sparta's bitter Peloponnesian enemy they made an alliance with people in the north the first aliens who were famous for their cavalry and the implication of that being that the Athenians had warlike intentions against

the Spartans signing up first of all with their most famous Local enemy and then signing up for the opportunity to have a cavalry to use as well and indeed as we will see it did leave very soon to a war between Athens and Sparta and there are the two sets of allies in what modern historians call the first Peloponnesian War but before we get to that I think we want to attend to the great changes in Athens internally that were brought about by this great revolution I think first thing we need to do is to

dispose of Ephialtes which is what his enemies did almost immediately this he was murdered somebody came in stuck a knife in him it's very interesting this is the only political assassination that we know of in the entire history of the Athenian democracy when you think of how few were the methods for protecting anybody in the Athenian State it really is a remarkable thing and sometimes I think when you look back at the history of the United States and the number of Presidents who have either been killed or shot at attempts made to kill them it's

quite extraordinary that the Athenians this is the only case we know nobody no knows to this day who committed it there were various rumors of which it one is obviously inspired by political considerations and hard to believe claims that Pericles killed him in order to clear the way for his own leadership of the kradic faction I don't think we need to Take that seriously but that was one of the charges more likely it was the murder was brought about by disgruntled commodians disgruntled conservatives disgruntled aristocrats people who were very angry at the turn of events

that had changed everything in Athens but if we look at the situation in Athens in 461 for 16 and so on we are seeing a movement towards a democratic I don't want to say revolution I suppose but at a rapid movement to make the state the City of Athens more democratic than it ever had been and I'd like to turn next to the story of what that full-blown Athenian democracy was like and how it worked let me just remind you that in the decade before 500 if we go back to the cleisthenic world the greeks

who lived in the city state called athens established the world's first democratic constitution but this new kind of government was carried to its classical Stage by the reforms of pericles a half a century later in these years between 460 and 450 it's really when most of the action took place and it was in the Athens shaped by Pericles that the greatest achievements of the Greek world took place we should remember that the rest of the world continued to be characterized by monarchical rigidly hierarchical command societies while in democracy while in Athens democracy was carried as

far as it would go before Modern times perhaps if you look at it in a certain way further than at any other place and time and I'm going to start asking you to be aware of your prejudices and to hold them lightly so that you can have the most full understanding of things that may have the same names but really were very different from things that we are accustomed to one thing that's worth pointing out right away was Athenian democracy the act the access to the Political process was limited in Athens to adult males of

native parentage Athenian citizenship granted full and active participation in every decision of the state without regard to the wealth or the class of the citizen in the 450s under Pericles leadership the Athenian assembly passed a series of laws that went far towards establishing a constitution that was as thoroughly Democratic as the world has ever seen it gave direct and ultimate power to the Citizens in the assembly and in the popular law courts where the people made all decisions by a simple majority vote and it provided for the selection of most public offices by allotment for

the direct election of a very special few and for short terms of office and close control over all public officials we need to have a clear understanding of the kind of regime Pericles reforms produced before I don't think it's easy for citizens of what are called Democracies in the 20th century 21st century to comprehend the character of the democracy of ancient Athens and the role that had played in the life of its citizens to a degree that's hard for us to grasp politics was primary in the ancient Greek city and the form of the Constitution

was understood and expected to shape the character of its citizens the art the literature the philosophy and all the great achievements of Periclean Athens Cannot be fully understood apart from their political and constitutional context in the democracy established by Cleisthenes and then extended by Pericles later I think a place to start with a description of the Athenian democracy is with some attempt at a definition of the term developments in the modern world make that really hard for the word has become debased and is almost meaningless few modern states will admit to being anything but Democratic

that is confusing enough but there are further complications many people today would insist that to qualify as a democracy a state must offer full constitutional and political protections and opportunities to all who have legal permanent residents within its borders and who desire citizenship but the Athenians limited the right to vote to hold office to serve on juries to adult males who were citizens slaves resident aliens women and male citizens Under the age of 20 were denied all these privileges modern critics of ancient Athens questioned the Democratic character of the Periclean regime because of the presence

of slavery and the exclusion of women from political life in excluding such groups the Athenians were like every other society since the invention of civilization about 3000 BC until just recently so it's really not too interesting or amazing to point out this shortcoming From our point of view what sets the Athenians apart are not these exclusions but the unusual large degree of inclusion as well as the extraordinarily significant and rewarding participation of those who were included it's useful to remember that what has been called the Jacksonian democracy in the United States coexisted with slavery in

the its fullest moments that women were everywhere denied the right to vote until the 20th century and That we continue to limit political participation to those of a specified age to deny the title of democracy to parity in Athens because of those excluded would be to employ a parochial and anachronistic set of criteria that produced paradoxical results certainly no contemporary Greek doubted that Athens was a democracy the only argument was whether a democracy was good or bad which is it almost an unthinkable question to put in our own time let's Look at it from the

other end the Athenians would have been astonished at the claim of modern states to that title even such states as the United States and Great Britain for to them an essential feature of democracy was the direct and full sovereignty of the majority of citizens government by elected representatives checks and balances separation of powers appointment to important offices unelected bureaucracies judicial life Tenure terms for elective office of more than one year all of these would have seemed clear and deadly enemies of what reasonable people might understand by democracy so these differences between ancient and modern ideas

require a brief examination of how the Athenian democracy worked if we are to shed our prejudices and grasp the care of a form of government that is as rare as any in the history of the world and that probably never existed in anything Like the same form after the end of Athenian autonomy so I like to use a helpful if anachronistic advice by considering the three familiar branches into which we divided government legislative executive and judiciary at the heart of what we would call the legislative branch of the Athenian democracy was the assembly their word

was ecclesia it was open to all the adult male citizens of Athens during Pericles lifetime these may have been 40,000 possibly as many as 50,000 men now most Athenians live many miles from the city few owned horses so attendance required a very long walk to town so as a result the number taking part normally was well short of that it was probably from five to six thousand people one reason for saying that is that there was a quorum for some actions that you had to have at least 6,000 votes on the one hand that tells

us I think that there were probably more than That who attended the assembly you wouldn't make a quorum being everybody who ever attended the place but on the other hand it suggests that there were many assemblies with fewer than 6,000 votes hmm the meetings took place outside on a hill called Nick's not far from the Acropolis and overlooking the Agora citizens sat on the earth of this sharply sloping hill and the speaker's stood on a low platform it was not easy for them to make themselves heard you Can imagine it's an outdoor place they don't

have microphones the great 4th century orator z' are said to have practiced well the he's the greatest of them is said to have practiced speaking at the seashore over the crashing surf to make his voice strong enough to be heard on the peninsula for an athenian politician we got some idea of the opening of these meetings From a comic version that is given to us in Aristophanes comedy accordions performed in the year 425 the speaker is a typical era Stefanik comic hero an old-fashioned farmer from the backwoods who complains about the war war is now

about 6 years old because it keeps him in athens away from his farm in the country I quote now from the era Stefanik passage it is the day of an assembly he says he's by the way he's sitting there all by himself on the Pinet and there he is complaining it is the day of an assembly and already morning but the Picts is deserted they are chattering in the Agora dodging the rope dripping with red dye that's a reference to the fact that the Athenians are always slow to come from the marketplace the Agora the

city center and make it up the hill to the Penix because they was so busy talking that they just wouldn't get going so they the officials had some guys Carrying a rope dipped in red dye they circled the Agora and they kept closing the circle until everybody was out you would be running away from them in the first place because you wouldn't want to get your coat full of red dye and so that's that's the buddies referring to he said even the presidents of the assembly have not arrived they will be late and when they

finally come they will push and fight each other for a seat in the front row Streaming down altogether you can't imagine how but they will say nothing about making peace oh my ass uns I am always the first to make the return voyage to the Assembly and take my seat and since I am alone I grown I yawn I stretch my legs I fart I don't know what to do I write I pull out my loose hairs I add up my accounts looking off at my fields longing for peace hating the town sick for my

village home which never said by my charcoal my Vinegar my oil the word bi is unknown there where everything is free and so I have come here fully prepared to shout to interrupt to abuse the speakers if they talk about anything but peace but here come these noontime presidents didn't I tell you didn't I predict they were how they would come everyone jostling up to the front seat next the herald of the Assembly says move up move up within the consecrated area and then he recites the formula that regularly Begins debate in the assembly he

simply says who wishes to speak at which somebody raises a hand and the game gets started okay that's the comic version but the real meetings on the Penix were rarely comic they dealt with serious questions the assembly had four fixed meetings in each of the ten periods into which the official year was divided and also special additional meetings were called for when necessary topics included the approval or Disapproval of treaties making declarations of war assigning generals to campaigns deciding what forces and resources they should command confirming officials or removing them from office deciding whether or

not to hold an ostracism questions current concerning religion questions of inheritance in fact anything else that anybody wanted to bring up in the assembly it's especially amazing for a citizen of a modern representative democracy to Read of these great town meetings dealing directly with questions of foreign policy that could mean life or death for those present at the debate and for their entire city to get some idea of the distance between ancient and modern democracy we need only to consider how an emergency say the seizure of an American Embassy would be dealt with today in

the United States it'd probably have arrived first as secret information At some Bureau other governments vast and complex complex intelligence service although it could also just show up on CNN for the before the government knows but it would be treated as highly confidential and revealed only to a few people in the White House the State and Defense Department's policy would be discussed in a small closed group and the decision made by one man ultimately the President of the United States and if there were no leaks a big if people Would hear of it only when

the die had been cast and model for this those of my Vintage were was the Cuban Missile Crisis which was kept as a great secret in those days the press actually would keep secrets in behalf of the national security he imagines such an old-fashioned approach but and then they had been kicking it around for a week when the president got on television and told us what the Menace was and what he was doing about it it was too late to Have any discussion or argument about it but that's the way it works in our system

questions of war and peace rose more than once empirically in Athens and each time the popular assembly had a full debate and made the decision by raising their hands in a vote determined by a simple majority I don't think there's any stronger evidence of the full and final sovereignty of the Athenian people on the most important questions than the fact that that is the Way they made those decisions an assembly of thousands of course could not do its business without health for that it relied on the Council of 500 chosen by a lot from all

Athenian citizens although it performed many public functions that the larger body could not and efficiently its main responsibility was to prepare legislation for consideration by the people in this respect as in all others the council was The servant of the assembly the assembly could vote down a bill drafted by the council they could change it on the floor they could send it back France with instructions for redrafting or they could replace it with an entirely different bill full sovereignty and the real exercise of public authority rested directly with the assembly almost no constitutional barrier prevented

a majority of the citizens assembled on the picks on a particular day from doing Anything they wanted to do turning to the executive as what we would call the executive these distinctions did not exist for the Athenians they didn't make these divisions but to help us understand that I'm using these terms what we might call the executive was severely limited in extent in discretion and power and the distinction between legislative and judicial authority was far less clear than in our own society to begin with there was no president no Prime Minister no cabinet there was

not any elected official responsible for the management of the state in general for formulating or proposing a general policy nothing that Americans would call an administration or that the British would call a government the chief elected officials were ten generals voted for a one-year term as their title indicated they were basically military officials who commanded the army in the Navy they could be reelected without Limit and extraordinary men like Keemun and Pericles were elected almost every year but they were very exceptional the political power such men exercised was limited to their personal ability to persuade

their fellow citizens in the assembly to follow their advice they had no special political or civil authority and except on military and naval campaigns they couldn't give orders to anybody even in military matters the powers of the generals were severely Limited leaders of expeditions were selected by vote of the full Athenian assembly which also determined the size of the force and what goals it should pursue before the generals took office they were subjected to a scrutiny of their qualifications by the Council of 500 after completing their year of service their performance on the job and

especially their financial accounts were subject to audit in a special process called a youth Runa nor was this the Only control by the people over the few officials chosen by election ten times a year the popular Assembly voted to determine whether the generals conduct of military affairs appears satisfactory and if the people vote against someone's confirmation in office he is tried in a law court if he is found guilty they assess his punishment or fine if he is acquitted he resumes office since elected office conferred prestige Elected officials were carefully confirm a control rather lest

they should under mine the rule of the people that's what's behind all of this careful check on the generals even with these severe controls the Athenians fulfilled only a few public offices by election choosing their military officials their naval architects and only some of their treasurer's as well as the superintendent of the city water supply in that manner all other officials and There were a good number of them were chosen by lot allotment was the characteristic devised by which the Athenians chose their officials in accordance with the dominant demo kradic principle which was equality which

held that any citizen who was capable of performing civil responsibilities well enough and it's corollary that feared allowing executive or administrative power to fall into the hands of a few men even those who were Experienced or had special abilities for these reasons the Athenians fulfill the bulk of their offices by lot and limited tenured to one term per man in each office except for the Council of 500 where a man could serve twice in the course of his life generals however could be reelected forever because it was so obvious that issues of skill and ability

were literally vital in that job and so that was the one real exception to being Limited to a very short term to a degree that is amazing to the modern mind the Athenians kept the management of their public life in the hands of ordinary citizens away from professors professionals experts bureaucrats and politicians I'll pick up the rest of the story next time